I am so excited that we can put pictures in our posts now! Josh just taught me how to do it and he watched me resize a bunch of photos. He said, “Are you going to put all of those in your post? Because that’s why we have a photo gallery.”Don’t worry I’m going to add some to the gallery too!
Lily was evaluated by physical therapy today and she did great! Lily definitely has a condition called Torticolis. “Torticolis is a condition that causes a baby’s head and neck to tilt to one side.” According to BabyCenter, it affects about 2% of newborns and the cause is unknown although some doctors posit that it may be caused by the baby’s position in the uterus. I don’t think that is the case in our situation. We have some pictures of Lily when she was first born and a couple weeks old where she is looking to the right. I think we saw that Lily was looking to the left so we started to put her toys and everything on that side. Then we started to realize that she hardly ever looked to the right. But it doesn’t matter, we have diagnosed it early and she is getting the therapy she needs.
The therapist went through a very thorough evaluation of Lily’s movements and range of motion. She said that her range of motion to the right is 25-30 degrees, it should be 90 degrees. Her worst position is on her back. As soon as she lays on her back her head falls to the left. Because of this, she has developed a flat spot on the lower left side of her head… we do not want that! The therapist was very encouraged, however, at how straight she holds her head when she is sitting up. She has no tilt or turn at all. The therapist was very excited about this and said that it means she has not developed any side effects yet. So that was great news!
So what do we do from here? We do A LOT of therapy! We have a two specific stretches that we do 5 times per day. They are very simple to do. One works on the turn and the other on the tilt. Lily really does not like the one that streches for the turn but doesn’t seem to mind the other. I stopped by the daycare today and taught them how to do the stretches as well. They were very open to working with her during the days she is there which is great! We will go into see the therapist once a week for a while and then we will wean to every 2 weeks. She estimated that it would take about 6 months to correct. She has like 5 therapy goals that she has to meet before she can be “discharged.” They include being able to turn to the right 90 degrees,flex to the right 45 degrees, rolling to the left and right, using both hands when she plays (she also seems to favor her left hand – because its the one she can see), and hold her head up straight when sitting.
Other than therapy we have other things to work on as well. We have to discourage her from falling to the flat spot which means propping her head so she can’t look to the left as easily. We have to do tummy time as much as possible – we are pretty lucky because she actually really likes tummy time. In fact, today, I put her on her tummy and she played for awhile. Then she fell asleep. The therapist had talked about this and she suggested that I try to turn her head to the right when she is sleeping because that is the best time to stretch because she is relaxed and it is a longer stretch than what it would be if she were awake. So I did. It took a couple of tries but eventually she stayed asleep for 30 minutes! Very encouraging!!! We also have to move all of her toys to her right side and make the left side as boring as possible. This is kind of hard because Lily thinks just about anything is pretty exciting, even if it is just a blank wall. But we are doing absolutely everything we can to get this fixed before it becomes a bigger issue than it needs to be!
I know this is already a long post but I have to write about the deep freezer! So, as some of you know, breast feeding did not go so well for Lily and I. We did it for about two weeks and then I started pumping and feeding her from a bottle. We are both much happier with this arrangement. Well I produced A LOT of extra milk so I thought I would freeze it. You can keep breast milk in the freezer for 3-4 months. Here is a picture of our freezer after 6 weeks of pumping.
(I know its sideways…sorry) So as you can see, the whole top drawer is packed and then there are random bags mixed in with our food in the bottom drawer. It got so bad that we couldn’t even go down the freezer section at the grocery store because we didn’t have room for food. There was no way that I was going to be able to use the frozen food before 3-4 months. Luckily I was talking to one of my co-workers who had just listed her deep freezer in the “Carle Classifieds.” We jumped on it! We picked it up from her house a couple of days later, cleaned it up and plugged it in.
Here is a picture of the pile of breastmilk on our kitchen floor once I got it all out of the freezer.
Finally, I separeted the breast milk into October and November and put it in the deep freeze. Oh I should mention that you can keep breast milk in the deep freezer for up to a year! Here is the after picture of our freezer now that it is free of over 150 bags of breast milk.
What an adventure! We will keep you updated on Lily’s torticolis issues. Other than that, she is doing great, as you can see with the smiles! We love smiles!!!
Next weekend, we are doing Cookie Day 2008 at our house and Sunday we are celebrating Christmas with the Reeley’s. Christmas Eve we will spend at my dad’s, Christmas Day at Aunt Sandy’s and then the Saturday after Christmas at Uncle Mike and Aunt Cindy’s. We are crazy busy but it should be a lot of fun!
I still haven’t had time to write up the RSS article, but I haven’t forgot. As a peace offering I have attached a picture of our house with the Christmas lights on (sorry it isn’t one with snow in it… but it is cold outside now).