Sorry I am slow at getting these updates out. The last few days have been busy and Liam isn’t sleeping very well at night. Children with TBIs don’t always sleep very well. We have some good nights and some not so good nights. In the past three days I have had a total of 9 hours of sleep. And as we all know babies want their mamas when they don’t feel good or are having a hard time sleeping. Liam is no exception to this. From here on out the past history updates are going to written as if I am talking to Liam. The reason for this is that they are excerpts from my journal that I am writing to him. The journal was a way to help me in his recovery. If I wrote down even the smallest of accomplishments I would be able to look back and see progress no matter how small it was.
The first month home.
When you came home you were on a preventative medicine for seizures due to your injury. The medicine tasted terrible and had bad side effects. We tried to make it more palatable by mixing it with sugar and breast milk. But that didn’t seem to help. It made you nauseous, irritable, gassy and unable to sleep. You had already lost quite a bit of weight in the hospital and now you are vomiting. At first you are only sleeping a few hours a day. And most of that sleep only occurs if we hold you. Your first month home we pretty much held you most of the time. If we set you down by yourself you cry. Part of it I am sure is due to the neurological damage, some might be due to you not being able to see and you are seeking comfort. Towards the end of the month that we can set you in a baby seat for a few minutes at a time without you fussing. After a week your neurologist started to wean you off of your medicine. As you are given less and less of the medicine you start to feel better. The vomiting stopped and you are sleeping a bit better. We started physical therapy (PT), occupational therapy (OT), weekly visits to the pediatrician and often visits to the neurologist this month. We also started frequent eye specialist visits. The eye specialist told us that your optic nerves and retinas were in good shape, but that you still have a hemorrhage behind your right eye which had not resolved yet. So only time would tell whether you will ever be able to see or not. One month after your injury you start to roll again from your back to your belly. It is hard for you as you are still experiencing the left hemiparesis. Big accomplishments this month were: you kind-of smiled, crinkled your brow when I tickled your foot, you have rolled a few times from back to belly, you are moving your left arm a bit, you learned to use a binky again, you seemed to be looking at the ceiling fan…maybe you are starting to see and at the end of the month you start to track things with your eyes at times (we are crossing our finger hoping that you are going to be able to see again). Fortunately you are nursing because we are really having a hard time teaching you how to use a bottle again. We only got you to use it once this month.
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