Trey holding his newborn sister, Sadie
On Tuesday, October 30, Trey and Avery’s baby sister, Sadie, was born in the water at home into the arms of her dad. I began having contractions at 4:30am, but they were not regular and I was able to sleep and nap through them until 2pm. My parents came at 3pm, the midwives came at 4:15 and my sister came by 5pm. I dilated to 7cm pretty quickly, but was stuck in transition for what felt like forever. Sadie was born at 7:12pm, and it was then I found out why she took longer to come out and was more painful than Avery’s birth. She was posterior.
Trey and Avery were great through it all, though they did have a few teary moments. Leading up to her birth we watched many many videos and talked a lot about what would happen, so they were prepared and knew I would be loud etc etc etc. Ryan caught her out of the water and Trey cut the umbilical cord. Both boys are so excited to have her around and smother her with kisses and hugs anytime she is awake.
And onto Dr. Escolar and UNC. What a stressful experience it is. Trey and Ryan had to fly for over 10 hours to get there and NC is 3 hours ahead of Vancouver, so by the time they arrived in NC, rented a vehicle, and checked into the hotel, they had less than 10 hours to sleep until they had to get up and be at an appointment in which Trey needed to be on his game (kids Trey’s age need more than 10 hours of sleep at night if they’re not napping). And Trey hates flying.
I spent yesterday wondering how the travel was going… was Trey upset getting on the airplanes, were any flights delayed, did they catch the connecting flight, did they get their luggage (last trip our luggage was lost), did they make it to the rental place before it closed (it closed at 12:30 and the flight arrived at 11:30), did Trey get to sleep early enough to spend 4-5 hours doing the development testing the next day…
And this morning I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep because I knew they were in the middle of testing. I waited for their conference call at 9:30. They called but weren’t finished testing, so they said they’d call around 12. At 12 I began waiting. And thinking and waiting and thinking. Waiting is not fun. They called at 1. And then Ry called to give me the low down while they were on their way to Whole Foods.
So here it is: Trey is doing great. I won’t go into crazy details, but he’s doing wonderfully. His visual reception skills jumped a ton. He gained 16 months of skills in 6 months. He’s in the 79th percentile there. In language understanding he gained what was expected. His expressive language gained 8 months in 6 months. His fine motor skills only gained 2 months in 6 months, but last time he had a huge gain in that area, and Dr. Escolar said that kids/people may work on one area of skills more than others in a given time. He is still well within normal for his age in this area. His gross motor is beyond the point of the test, so all she could say there is that she is not concerned. Cognitively he is doing well. He is learning at the same rate as he was 6 months ago and his IQ is good.
She wants us to continue to monitor his hearing closely as his articulation is not great. He also has trouble with sequencing and localizing his fingers, but this can be a problem area for kids his age who do not have Hunter’s so she’s not concerned. All of this tells her that Trey is okay. She won’t guarantee us anything until he turns 5, she said, but she did say that the closer he gets to 5, with every six months that goes by, the chances of him having CNS involvement drops. Most kids’ (with Hunter’s) development has started to drop by now.
Ry called minutes after our conference call. It was so nice talking to him… relieving. And just to hear his voice. When I talked to Trey I cried. I’ve never been away from him for this long, and other than this past week when I missed a PT/OT appointment and his ERT, I have never missed an appointment of Trey’s, not to mention a test across the continent and one as stressful as this one. Well, it’s over and now I can just plain miss them and they can go play… they’re going to a kids play place tomorrow as well as a UNC basketball game. Whew.