More Shots!

Will had a second round of Botox injections this last week. It was a completely horrifying experience for about 30 seconds.  I had to hold him in a bear hug with his legs dangling down, while they gave him a total of FOUR injections--one in each calf and one in each hamstring. This was the toughest round for me simply because of his eloquence in expressing the pain.  He turned his little head around to see what they were doing behind him and wailed "What are you doing to my legs!!!!????!!!!" and "It hurts so bad!!!!" There was a moment I thought I might puke.

We've also been referred to New Berlin Therapies for PT once a week. This is a big change for us--we'd only been doing Birth-3 PT and it was very sporadic---it was always a "teaching" session, and it got to the point where they weren't showing us anything new.  Anyway, they tested him for 3 different areas, Ball Skills (catching, throwing and kicking) where he surprised me by testing at 38 months, but tested at 21 months for Balance Skills and 28 months for Locomotive Skills (running, walking, jumping).  So, it's been determined that his gross motor skills are delayed and posing a safety issue (he's still extremely wobbly on stairs, coming down a curb, or running across gravel, etc.)

New Berlin Therapies was always recommended to me by other preemie moms, like it was just the end all be all of where I needed to be--and now I see why!! This place has slides, swings, a huge trampoline, a ball pit, ladders and anything else you could possibly dream up to play with--and they use it all in therapy.  They have him step on bubbles, climb a rope ladder, ride a tricycle--you can't make PT any more fun than that!! I'm really looking forward to seeing how he progresses!!

The third component at this point is a new set of orthotics.  He received a new pair at the end of September, and they were so ill-fitting that I finally just decided he wasn't going to wear them.  When we had the followup with the doctor who prescribed them, she was pretty disgusted with the shoddy work and sent us to be re-fit.  We'll pick those up this next week, so we'll see what happens with those.

This probably sounds like a lot--but I know in the grand scheme of everything that he could be dealing with, it's a small thing.  It's frustrating for me to watch him struggle to keep up with other kids his age--and some even  younger, but I know how far he's come and I know that things will only keep getting better!