Breathing Treatments and EI

No guarantees that I can keep this post short - sorry!  I'll break it into 2 parts though, because a lot has happened in the past couple of days!


Breathing Treatments
I gave Judith her first breathing treatment Wednesday night.  That was an epic fail: Judith screamed through the entire treatment, and it was the type of fit she normally reserves for the doctors' offices.  And since she had herself so worked up, she puked all over the place once the treatment was done.  So not only did I have to worry about remembering what I needed to clean on the nebulizer, I had to clean up the vomit in the PnP and the Step & Play piano, plus change her and supervise her to make sure she didn't get into the dog water bowls.  Fun times.

Thursday morning started the same way: she was refusing her treatment, was fighting me, and threw the mask with medicine cup attached on the floor... twice.  Finally I had her sit on the couch (I was right next to her with a hand on her in case she decided to bolt) and tried holding the mask at her face instead of trying to strap it to her head.  Throw in a little singing, and she was able to complete the rest of the treatment.  I felt much more confident about things after seeing what would get her to respond, and I filed it in my mind for the next daytime treatment.

Thursday night, she slept through the entire treatment, which was my goal (it was my goal for Wednesday too, but she decided to wake up).  Score!

This morning, she did well!  Yes, she still shoved the mask away and wanted to play with it more, but we got the bulk of the treatment into her lungs since she allowed me to hold the mask against her face for longer periods.

Now let's hope that she continues to do that well for the remainder of the treatments!



Early Intervention
Judith's annual eval was yesterday afternoon, and I am very pleased with the results!  Judith actually performed the majority of the tasks they were looking for, save for a couple things!

An hour and a half later, the paperwork was signed and we had the results.  I can't remember what all of the specific numbers were (we should get the report in the mail soon), but I do remember that she's at a 16 month level in gross and fine motor, which means we're discharged from PT services!  She's somewhere around 16-17 months for cognition, but is lacking in communication and speech - she scored around 11 months in those areas.  As a result, she qualifies for speech services, and we will get those moving within a few weeks once we set up a time with the therapist and whatnot.

If you are unfamiliar with how EI performs these evaluations, they score the baby/toddler based off of their actual/chronological age, so for a preemie, it often looks like there's a bigger delay than what there really is.  That's the case with Judith's speech and communication: if we adjust her age, she's actually within the normal range and would not qualify for services.  But because they base it off her actual age, she qualifies.  I'll do anything to help her get caught up to where she needs to be, and if speech services will be the final boost, so be it!

I was just thrilled to hear how well she's doing in so many areas, and to hear that she's almost completely caught up!  At this rate, she will be caught up by age 2, and that makes me happy to know how far she's come in such a short time!