Last week the girls had their Neonatal developmental check up. We were suppose to do it around when they were a year adjusted, but between them being sick or something coming up, we've had to re-schedule a bunch of times. Anyway, we weren't sure what to expect and we certainly weren't sure about who would be doing it. To our pleasant surprise, a few of their old nurses, therapists and Doctors were there to do the evaluation. Even Dr. Hiatt (the Director of the NICU) was there and was trilled to see the girls. It was really comforting to see a lot of familiar faces. So basically, Andy, me and the girls were cramped in to a small room, with about 6 nurses / therapists. What they do is test them to see how they are doing developmentally and if there are any concerns. They basically test their cognitive, gross motor, fine motor and receptive / expressive communication. There's only so much they can test in a few hours, so some of it is based on our witness of what they do. Overall, the girls did great. But the therapists did even better - it was amazing watching them and how they handled 3 at once - they were passing charts, getting girls involved when they could and when they would open up to them. And I think the girls really had a fun time with them. All of them were tested as having an age of 14 months (which was their adjusted age at the time of the appointment). Here's the run down of their evaluation:
- Aven: Tested out with a cognitive age of 14 months, gross motor age of 14 months, fine motor skills at an age of 16 months, receptive communication at 11 months and expressive language at 13 months. So all and all for the physical aspects she's at or "better" than her adjusted age and for the other stuff she is at or below by a few months. Overall nothing to be concerned with and they did not recommend any further intervention for Aven. Just to come back at her corrected age of 18 months, which is the normal.
- Bria: Tested out as the exact same as Aven, on every measure. And they said the same about her that they don't recommend any additional intervention.
- Stevie: Tested out with a cognitive age of 13 months, gross motor at 10 months, fine motor skills at an age of 11 months, receptive communication at 11 months and expressive communication at 11 months. They basically recommended that she continue with her current early intervention that she is receiving. Overall they are pleased with her, just need to keep doing what we are doing with her. It was good timing because last week we also had a 6 month check on her current EI therapies. She did meet all of her milestones that we set out the previous 6 months, which was great. We did choose to change her therapy up a bit though. Instead of doing DI once a week and PT once a week, we are doing PT twice a week. We think that once Stevie learns to walk that she will then work on her communication, so we wanted to ramp up her PT and then once she is walking we will re-evaluate any speech therapy at that time. We've got a great EI coordinator that helps us through this process.
And here's a photo and video of what the girls are up too. They are climbing everywhere now - even Stevie... And of course, we had a few dance parties recently :-)
Aven and Bria dancing...
Aven dancing the other night... She definatly likes dancing and has got some good moves :-)
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