Six Month Preemie Assessment

Today we took Henry, James and Elanor to AMC – Behavioral/Developmental Pediatrics for their preemie assessment. Basically it’s to “assess” how they’re doing developmentally, whether they’re on track, lagging, or ahead and to see whether they need any special treatment (i.e. physical therapy etc).

The babies got weighed in and measured.
Ellie was 26.5” long and 14.1lbs, her head was 16” (I think)
James was 27” long and 17.35lbs, head was 16.5” (I think)
Henry was 26.75” long an  18.65lbs, head was 17.5” (I think)

All in all it was a really good visit. They usually will judge them on their corrected age (the age they would be now if they had been born full term), but they were all beyond that. For most things they were in line with their actual age (5.5 months), or only just under that.

The doctor was very impressed with how they were doing and had absolutely no concerns. She invited us to come back in 6 months (which is the standard) if we wanted to, or just call if we had questions.

I did ask her about the shape of Henry and Ellie’s heads, since they’re really rather badly mis-shaped. She didn’t think it was anything severe enough to warrant a helmet. It was moderate, but with 6-7 months of good head growth still to come and since they are sitting up right in toys and on their tummies {meaning less time on their backs and heads} she seemed to think they will correct themselves, BUT if we don’t see any more improvement in the next couple of months then we can get the name of the neuro-Dr who deals with them.

I asked our pediatrician about the helmets and he gave me such a perfunctory response, that I wasn’t really too calmed by him, but hearing it from the specialist I’ll take it. That and she said that she’s rather a head-Nazi. She has twins herself and is very particular about the shape of babies heads, because it can have lasting impact….even only cosmetically.

So the word is that they’re all doing REALLY well and we have nothing to worry about with them. YAY! and THANK YOU LORD!