Jacob's Page - Aug/Sep, 1998
Friday - September 25, 1998 As you may have already read in Savannah's page, I stopped by the nursery where Jacob was resting during her birthday party. By this time he was waking up. I took the liberty of taking him out of his crib and sitting on the floor to play for awhile. During the 30 minutes I was there I was able to witness his first true crawling steps. He took a total of 3 crawling steps toward mommy. I coaxed and coaxed, and couldn't believe he did it today in such a short time period. I've been trying to do this for weeks, and couldn't believe he did it so readily. We haven't been able to replicate it again yet tonight, as he's come down with a bit of a cold (the first in about a month) and was a bit crabby tonight. I think he'll be tickled pink when he can get around better. Look out everyone, like is about to change as we know it. Scroll down to see a newer picture of Jacob at 8.5 months. Hugs til later!
Thursday - September 24, 1998
Today is Jacob's 9 month birthday! It's really nice because both he and Savannah have a ‘milestone' about the same time this year, as she will be two years old on Sunday! Take a look at Jacob in a picture from 2 weeks ago:
This week was a little crazy as Paul went out of town on Sunday for 3.5 days. During that time frame Jacob experienced some significant milestones.
Sleeping: He was nice enough to wake up every two hours for 3 nights in a row.
Teething: He had 3.5 teeth come in (one for each day daddy was a way). He now has 4 uppers and 2.5 lower (left side=.5)
Sitting: His daycare teacher worked with him on Monday to go from a tummy, to a crawl stance, up to a sitting position. He was pretty frustrated by the end of the exercise, but has been overall much happier ever since.
Climbing: I am amazed at the differences between the two kids. Some say it's a boy vs. girl thing, others say, gross vs. fine motor skills. It's probably a mix of things, but Jacob wants and will try to climb on anything and anyone he can get his hands on. It's truly amazing. Any box or furniture that's near him. Look out, because he's going for it. Quick, get the gates up! It won't be long.....
Crawling: He can do the backwards commando crawl (lying on tummy), he can do a few steps backwards on all fours, and he can take one, almost two steps in a traditional crawl. On the latter, he usually just drops to his belly after the first step. Almost there though!
Standing: Jacob loves to stand, although he can't stand for very long without toppling over. No cruising yet, but we expect that soon.
Eating: This is one of those that I hate to discuss. It depends on the day, but looks like his baby food days are over. Most everything is table food oriented and starchy. We use some babyfood occasionally to get the veggies down. However, he sure takes after mom on the eating. Such a sweet tooth. He will generally eat, any crackers, cheerios, cookies, breads, and pasta so long as he can hold it. Today, we had a pizza bagel, and he really seemed to like it. Not sure if it was the teething on it, or if he liked the taste, but hey, he's eating something new. We are going to try some new things that some people suggested, chunks of potatoes, mashed potatoes, spreads on bread. Still looking for others, particularly healthy options, if you have any!
Disposition: The last 2 weeks have been a little stressed. This week, Jacob's general disposition has improved significantly now that he can sit-up on his own. I expect he will get more frustrated in the days to come as he wants to crawl sooo much. I think it is especially frustrating to these kiddies when they have an older brother/sister around that can get up and run around, yet as babies they are 'stuck' until they are coordinated enough. Right now, Jacob is very affectionate and loving. He loves to get hugs, and 'nuzzle' as daddy calls it, right into the crook of your neck (he seems to do it with daddy more right now). He seems to be a happy baby, outside of daycare (heehee). He is such a flirt with all the ladies. Like Savannah, he tries to get the attention of passerby'ers & then tries to elicit a smile from them. For instance, the other night we went out to dinner. The waitress came by to check on us, and bent over to clear the table. She was talking to him, and he was smiling. Then, while bent over little Jacob grabbed at her shirt. Totally accidental, but Mom had to assume that he got that trait from Daddy. It was a great laugh afterwards for all of us!
I guess that's it for now! Look for 9 month pictures coming soon.
Update as of 9/11/98 - Here are the latest pictures of Jacob within the last 2 weeks at 8 months old. I also have one further down of Jacob at 7 months.
"Mom, am I supposed to play with these puzzle pieces or or eat them?"
Labor Day Weekend, 1998 This past week has been the best. Last Friday, Labor Day Weekend, Paul took Savannah away to see his family in Lockport, NY. While they were gone, I had this picture of Daddy to look at....
"Hey everyone, Daddy and I are true Buffalo Bills fans!"
While Paul and Savannah were out of town, Mom and Jacob spent numerous, bountiful hours playing together and bonding. It was quality time well earned, deserved and spent. A little history for those that are new, since Jacob's surgery to clip his tongue 2-3 weeks ago, he has been much fussier and overall more sensitive to people, stimuli, and food. This last weekend gave Jacob Paul abundent time, one-on-one, with Mommy. I think we both needed it. Over the weekend he started eating better than we had seen him eat, ever! He finally started eating solids, mostly starchy table foods, like breads and pasta. Til now, aside from the first 2 weeks of eating solids, he would only eat crackers! He still shows an aversion to the spoon, but this week has started to come around. He does not like baby foods, but also seems to be coming around a little as of yesterday. We think it has to do with control. He likes to control what's going to his mouth (although won't put a spoon to his mouth). Also, now that he is better able to move his tongue, he can swallow table foods better. We have seen a complete turnaround, less the normal baby fussiness one expects! :)
Jacob is getting close to crawling. He gets on all fours and can move around about 180 degrees, but isn't showing the required coordination for frontward mobility yet. We expect it could be any day or even a few weeks. You never know. All we know is that he hates to be still. He wants to be on the go all the time. Look out everyone! Maybe the next time I write, he will be cruising furniture and/or crawling...
"Look Mom -- Nana can tell that I'm ready to walk!"
On Monday, September 7th Jacob cut his 3rd tooth, top left upper! As soon as we get a picture showing those teeth we'll add that too. Right now they are all to little to see without prying open his mouth, and well, we know how receptive he is to that!
Update as of 8/31/98 - This update is a little late, as I had hoped to upload it a couple days ago. Jacobs first tooth came through Sat, August 21st! The second one just a day later. He now has 2 bottom teeth. They sure were hard to see until the following week.
Jacob went in for minor surgery on Wednesday, August 26th, 1998 because he had ankylglossia, aka "tongue tie". It is a fairly common, hereditary ailment where the frenula is attached from the underside back of the mouth all the way to the front. In Jacob's case, it was tied to the very front tip of the tongue, causing a 'heart-shape' to the front of his tongue. The current medicinal trend shows the surgery to release it as "unneccessary, unwarranted, and barbaric". We disagreed with the current medical mindset, and opted to have the frenula clipped. It is minor surgery, but requires general anesthesia in most cases. There are significant and very potential risks of speech problems if you don't have it clipped. This is especially true when the tie is as severe as Jacob's. The actual procedure went well and was over in about 20 minutes. Since the day after (we won't discuss the actual day of surgery) he has done quite well. He is starting to eat more chunky solid foods, and chokes much less than he did before (even though the medical profession swears there is no correlation). Yeaa it's over though!
As for everything else, other 7/8 month milestone's include: Putting himself into the crawl position on 8/23/98, 1 day shy of his 8 month birthday, attempting to pull himself up and getting into a kneeling position successfully, the use of "babababa" when frustrated or tired/hungry(seemingly trying to say bottle), AND interestingly enough, the lack of interest in any pureed foods. Seems he has an oral aversion to a spoon of anytime. However, the last few days has finally shown an increase in foods that are table like -- white rice, pasta noodles, etc. What am I going to do with the 6 cases of baby food we have? Uggh. I did use 1 yesterday to supplement the Banana cake that Savannah and I made together
So the absolute latest news comes from our PED appointment yesterday. I love this nurse practitioner (until yesterday),
as she spent extensive time as a nurse in a NICU. I spent the entire time justifying/explaining Jacob's eating habits and experiences. It started with a nurse weigh-in / measurement. My 32 weekers 8 month 1 week weight came up 16.2# and length 25.75". Mind you, 25.75" was the final decided upon length, since the first time she said 24.5" -- until I questioned it repeatedly. So we rechecked him and came up with a more
acceptable length. This length has him just under the 5th percentile uncorrected. Right on the same curve which is good.
"Look everyone, here I am (before surgery) at 7 months old. See how much older I look!"
Apparently, Jacob's weight has not increased in 1 month. The last 3 visits show him weighing in at 16.2# I made a point to mention that Jacob has been weighed on different scales each time, and asked her to weigh him on the same scale as before. She didn't want to do that, because the other scales were on the sick side. Uggh. When he was under 10lbs they ALWAYS used the same scale for consistency, but over 10lbs they usually don't
unless weight has been a factor, which seemingly is to them now. As a parallel to this, we had daughter Savannah weighed on 2 different scales last visit. The weight difference was 14 ounces. Seems to me, that this scale difference could be a significant issue, especially for a former preemie, where just ounces are signficant.
Part of the problem was her attitude was too all knowing and preaching. This may sound familiar to many of you, she went through the entire gamut of foods to introduce, how to introduce them, at what times, how many times a day. She was not just being informative, she was actually condescending about it. Excuse me, I know how to feed my kids -- just look at Savanah --
it's just that despite all the different attempts, he's not yet been overly receptive. She also had the nerve to criticize me for giving him crackers/rice cakes. She asked "why not pureed meat?" (I eat meat, but prefer not to give it to my kids before they learn to like other things under 12 months), "why not baby foods, you know you can make your own?" (he does not seem to like anything pureed anymore), "why not cheerio's?". I pointed out that he always gagged and choked on cheerio's, pre-tongue clipping, and that he mushed on the crackers and rice cakes with much falling on his shirt and only some sliding down his throat. At least he was continuing to eat though. I haven't tried cheerio's again since his tongue clipping last week, but think he'll do better on them now. Uggh.
Fortunately, the actual PED - 2 weeks ago, was informed by me of my awareness that he was not eating more than just crackers, breastmilk, and breastmilk bottles with organic rice cereal (at daycare). He said "don't worry, he'll start eating soon enough, in his own time...especially if he's at daycare, with a bottle, and other kids eating real food -- since he won't have the breast to rely on". He is sooo open and well versed in dealing with FT and former preemie's. I wish he had been there so I could have
consulted with him too.
I keep trying to remind myself that kids adjust to foods differently, and certainly at different ages, and in many cases truly have food aversions/disorders. I have a lot of friends with FT kids that didn't really start showing interest in foods until 8-9 months at all. I do think Jacob DOES have an aversion to the spoon right now, probably exacerbated now by the tongue surgery (done under gen'l anesthesia). However, I am pretty certain he has just a finicky food habit and like many
of you will monitor him closely and try all the suggestions friends have given.
The good news is that the last 3 days (about a week since surgery), he has enjoyed eating big people food (good motivation for my daughter too). If I finger feed him, after showing him the food first, pasta, rice, banana bread, he seems to really enjoy it. By the way, when I mentioned this to the nurse practitioner she didn't seem to impressed. She was too #@$%
concerned about the fricking numbers on the scale. I guess that's what this is mostly (8 paragraphs later) about.
Now, I don't now about you, but I look at this baby and he has full cheeks and full tummy. Seems reasonably good size, although not brimming with fat as my FT daughter was at this age, but let's not compare FT with Preemie. I think this nurse practition was mostly concerned about the numbers, compounded by anxiety because I paralleled this with his finicky eating/aversions to spoons and foods that I discussed in my last post. I am
going to use my instincts on this one and monitor it a little more closely, but TRY and not go beserk over it. Uggh. I hate when someone outside of myself, makes me uptight about something that I feel I have a pretty good hold of.
Thanks to Laura, one of our preemie list server mom's who just sent the following statistics of our hundreds of preemies recently surveyed which puts Jacob somewhere right in the middle:
That's it for now. We'll try to get some pictures up Labor Day weekend!
Weights of 29-32 weekers:
at 6 months -- 11 lbs 13 oz
at 12 months -- 17lbs 12 oz
Weights of 33-36 weekers:
at 6 months -- 16 lbs 4 oz
at 12 months -- 19lbs 8 oz
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