Group Therapy

We've been told repeatedly how important it is for infants to get as much therapy as possible early on, so we're happy that Lewis re-started both physical therapy and speech therapy today. He's missed a lot because of the surgeries. Physical therapy was very positive - Lewis is still hypertonic, meaning that there is much more tension in his muscles than normal (typical for infants who have suffered this type of brain insult). The therapist discovered today that he is able to relax that hypertonicity. The ability to relax the stiffness is a good sign that he will respond to physical therapy. We knew that Lewis wasn't always that tense, he does open his hands and relax his arms at points, especially if you help him. Until today, nobody asked or checked, so we didn't know that we knew. So we've go that going for us, which is nice.

Speech was not quite as positive, but still went okay. Lewis isn't too interested in his pacifier lately, but the therapist was still able to get him to suck a bit. She cleared us to try Dum-Dums for him tomorrow. On a related note, the surgeon would like Lewis to get a barium swallow test done soon, so that we can start working on feeding him by mouth. That will be a slow progression, but it will be great to start trying. Any feeding that we are able to do by mouth would complement the tube feedings.

Meantime, Lewis' NG tube feeds are up to 13 ml/h continuous and going okay. The goal is to get him up to about 30 ml/h. If we get that far with no problems, they'll work on making the feedings "less continuous", but not quite all at once. All of Lewis' stomach re-engineering makes the process pretty touchy.

Jenn also got Lewis into the baby sling that we used to carry Nate at this age. She took Lewis and the IV pole for a few laps of the NICU. Lewis promptly settled into the sling and took a nap.