Welcome to Elijahland

Elijah saw his pediatrician this morning and we have nothing but good news to report. His muscle tone is improving and the doctor seemed very pleased by this. He thought it was normal now, but still a teeny bit slack on his belly. It has improved, which is what really matters. The pediatrician was extremely positive. He mentioned that Elijah is not out of the woods yet, but he is growing and developing like he should be at this point which of course is a good sign. I think he even said “congratulations guys” when we left today and he seemed so happy to see that he is growing and that he is hitting the second month milestones.
Speaking of growing, Elijah is huge. Andy and I guessed what his weight was before they called us in and we were way off. Andy guessed 13 lbs 1 oz and I guessed 13 lbs 3 oz. What’s your guess? J He’s 14 lbs 6 oz! He’s in the 95th percentile for his age. No wonder our backs hurt sometimes! His head is growing too, which is also a really good thing. His sutures are starting to fill in and in my opinion, he gets cuter every day.
The Early Intervention ladies were here this afternoon and that also went really well. It was fun to watch them perform the test to see if he is doing certain things. It starts out easy and then keeps getting harder until he can’t do the things because he is too young. Elijah did well and they seemed pleased. He got tired near the middle of the test, so he stopped performing. We’ll get a report next week about how he did. They warned me that the test may say he is not able to do things that he really is able to do since the test is just a snapshot in time. Since he got sleepy near the end, it’ll show that he was unable to do those things. The ladies said that they could come every week, but didn’t see a need to do so at this point. He’s still so young and isn’t showing any signs that he needs the extra help. They said we were doing a good job and to keep interacting and stimulating him as much as possible. They’ll visit once a month and then perform another test when he is six months old.
Tomorrow morning Elijah will be having an EEG (a test that measures his brain activity by electrodes attached to his head). We want to start weaning him off of Phenobarbital and the neurologist wanted to make sure that Elijah isn’t having any seizures before they take him off of the drug. We of course do not want him to have any more seizures, but Phenobarb is pretty harsh and we don’t want him to be on it any longer if possible.
His last EEG was when he was seven days old. He was not having any seizures at the time, but it was abnormal (whatever that means!) Tonight we could use prayers that the EEG shows us some good news…that he is still not having any seizures and that his brain is processing information normally. Well, this little man is squirming around on my chest as I write this and I need to try to get him to go to sleep. Okay, now he’s getting mad, so goodnight!

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