To the point

The last Ages and Stages Questionnaire I filled out for Sophie was at six months of age. I was getting used to seeing the hateful things every couple of months, so I expected I'd see one again shortly after that.

I guess the big Early Intervention assessment at 8 months took the place of one potential survey. After that, I forgot all about them.

And then the 12 month survey turned up in my mailbox about a month ago.

Because Sophie is doing so fantastically well, and also because I'm impatient, I went through the whole thing and filled out everything I could when she was only 11 months old, not 12. You may recall from previous mentions of the ASQ that there are five categories (communication, gross motor, fine motor, problem solving, and personal social), and each contains six questions. You only need, on average, about three "Yes" answers and a "Sometimes" to pass each section.

Well, at 11 months of age, Sophie had 100% in four out of five categories (well, almost in gross motor- she managed to get her sixth yes when she took several consecutive steps a couple of weeks later). Fantastic.

But in the fifth category, communication (again), she scored a big fat whopping TWO out of six.

Huh? I was, to put it mildly, surprised by this, especially when every other area was perfect. I know we've previously heard that she has a mild communication delay, but our last visit to the speech therapist determined that she had overcome this.

Anyway, I guess I was putting the horse before the cart again, because now, three days before her first birthday, she's scoring five out of six in communication, too. It just shows that you can't work on everything at once- while she's been busy learning to walk, she's taken her time getting to the communication milestones.

The two things she could already do were play a nursery game like clapping hands without being shown how, and look in the direction of an object (specifically, Daisy, plus a lot of other things now) when asked where it is.

The three she's caught up on are following a simple instruction without being shown how (she can do several now, like eating a piece of fruit when told "in your mouth"); saying one word or sound in addition to mama/ dada (in her case "Mow!" every time she sees the cat); and pointing to indicate that she wants something.

The pointing was one of those odd things that she seemed to figure out overnight, and now she points relentlessly at everything and everyone. It's quite cute, and I like that she can now communicate clearly what she wants (even if it's something she can't have, like my mobile phone, the denial of which usually leads to a huge tantrum).

Sophie points out an emu:


And a cow (cow not featured):


The last one left on the list is shaking her head or nodding to indicate no or yes. I have a feeling that's going to be another overnight discovery, but at the moment she shows exactly no signs of figuring that one out.

Still, 35/36 ain't bad- in fact, it's well ahead of expectations. I really can't wait to get to our next Early Intervention assessment in February. I know the specialists are going to be absolutely blown away by her, and I'm certain she's going to be discharged as a patient.

Baby steps

The one we've all been waiting for is finally here- Sophie took her first steps a couple of weeks ago at eleven and a half months of age.

She's been standing up on her own for almost two months, but she's been very slow to translate that into walking.

We've been encouraging her constantly, and it finally paid off. She was getting undressed for her bath, and she wobbled, then took one tentative step. Paul was so excited that he rushed out to the kitchen with her and got her to repeat it.

Since then she's been practicing more, and she's up to six consecutive steps.

We'd been convincing ourselves that it wouldn't matter if we missed those first steps, since she was about to start daycare and there was a good chance she'd take them there. But you know, having been told that she might never walk when she was only a couple of weeks old, it turned out to be a really overwhelming moment. We both shed a few tears.

We are, as always, so proud of her and her achievements.

Due dates

So, as briefly mentioned in my previous post, this day last year was Sophie's due date.

Although I was well aware that only 4-5% of babies actually arrive on their due date, it was still a real disappointment to end this day with no baby in my arms. I was just looking forward to meeting her so much.

If I'd known how things were going to go, I probably would have gone out and stocked up on hard liquor.

Despite our rocky start, though, I have to say that one year on, our lives are even better than we could have imagined on this day last year.

We have a happy, healthy, beautiful daughter. I'm about to go back to work two days a week (I got that job I was going for). We've bought our own house. We have everything we wanted, and much more. Sophie amazes us every day, in little ways and big. And we can't wait for her first birthday on Saturday.

Prematurity Awareness Month

So, it turns out November is also Prematurity Awareness Month.

As encouraged by my favourite blogger Aunt Becky, I've joined the Fight for Preemies blogging campaign at Bloggers Unite by writing a post about a preemie baby who has touched my life.

It turns out it's an appropriate date to talk about our friends Pam, Anthony, and little Matty. This day last year was Sophie's due date. I was sitting on the couch willing her to pop right out, very much over the whole pregnancy thing, and wondering how much longer I was going to have to wait (four more days was the answer, as it transpired). I was grumpy. I was exhausted. I was uncomfortable.

And I don't think I would have been anywhere near as impatient, nor so quick to disregard my blessings, had I known Matty's story.

Matty, you see, was due just two days before Sophie. But he arrived almost five months early at only 25 weeks and five days of gestation.

We first encountered Matty and his parents at Princess Margaret Hospital while we were floating through the halls in a haze of shock after Sophie's birth and subsequent illness. We were lucky enough to spend the whole three weeks of our NICU experience staying in parent's accommodation, but others were not able to do so. Nonetheless, every night we were there, we noticed another couple who spent hours and hours sitting next to their baby's crib, reading to him from Harry Potter. They never missed a night. Their dedication was incredible.

We couldn't help but notice that they were up to later books in the HP series, and being logical types we concluded that they must have been doing this for some time. Just how long we weren't aware at that stage. By strange coincidence, Paul recognised Matty's mum Pam- they had gone to high school together some ten years before.

Several weeks later, we were home again, and I was researching on the Internet for stories of graduates from Ward 6B, the NICU. To my surprise, I happened across Matty's blog, and it was there I was able to read his whole story. I started at the first entry, and I read for probably four hours. I couldn't stop. You can read it here, too. It's a particularly amazing journey.

In short, Matty's early birth meant that he had a huge hill to climb on his way to full health. He faced blood transfusions, surgeries, infections, oxygen dependency and all sorts of other issues. He weighed a tiny 500 grams (about 17oz), which put him in the category of Extremely Low Birthweight Infants.

Matty got to go home a few months after Sophie, after a total of 202 days in hospital. Today he's happy and healthy and absolutely gorgeous.

Matty was one of the main reasons we started this blog- we wanted to help other people as much as reading Matty's inspirational story helped us.

So, spread the word. Prematurity Awareness Month aims to encourage greater understanding of the reasons behind premature birth, many of which are unknown. In time, it is hoped that fewer and fewer families will have to face these battles.

March of Dimes has more information, here.

Miracle Babies Awareness Month

Kicking off a whole stack of November blog posts, I'd like to mention Miracle Babies Awareness Month, which happens to be this one. November, that is.

The Miracle Babies Foundation is an Australian organisation founded to help families of babies who spend time in Neonatal Intensive Care Units, whether because they are born premature or because they're very sick.

The Miracle Babies Foundation provides advice and support for families both during and after the NICU experience. I can tell you from personal experience that ongoing support is so important. They raise funds for their activities through a number of different avenues, but in November, you can buy merchandise to support them (wristbands and the like) through Myer and Best and Less stores across Australia.

Read more about the Miracle Babies Foundation here.

Reminiscing

A colleague of Paul's is about five months pregnant at the moment, and today went for her fetal anatomy scan where she learned the sex of her baby.

It got me thinking about the day we found out we were having a girl, and reminded me how wonderful my whole pregnancy was. Sometimes that gets a bit lost in the stress that came after Sophie was born, but I really loved being pregnant. From the first minute the test showed up positive to the very end, it was just one deliriously happy moment after another. I was just re-reading my pregnancy journal last week (which in the best tradition of me and diaries was filled in to about 13 weeks and then forgotten) and I wrote that every one of those moments was something you could never imagine until it happened.

Seeing the pregnancy test come up positive; seeing a tiny, pulsing heartbeat on the first ultrasound; seeing the little blob move all by itself like a wee jumping bean on the second ultrasound (at just 9 weeks); seeing every part of her perfectly formed on the detailed scan at 13 weeks- I'll never forget what those moments felt like. They still make me tear up whenever I think about them.

A side view of Sophie at 13 weeks:


See her four little fingers and her thumb as she waves to the sonographer?:


A 3D view of Sophie at 13 weeks- she's lying on her back looking up, and her head is at the top of the picture:


But I think finding out that we were having a girl actually topped all of those moments. When I first announced that I was pregnant, a lot of people surprised me with how adamant they felt against finding out the sex. But Paul and I were always on the same page- we always wanted to find out as soon as possible what we were having. I couldn't stand having to call my baby "it". I felt a very strong connection to her right from the start and I felt like I needed a pronoun to really know who I was talking to in there.

The ultrasound technician asked us right at the start of our 20 week scan if we wanted to know the sex, and of course we said yes. I assumed she'd look straight in the relevant place and tell us, but no. We sat through a good hour of the scan while she noted that all the legs and arms and livers and so on were in the right place, and then she basically wrapped it up and said we were done.

No mention whatsoever of the sex.

I figured we had a stubborn leg crosser and she hadn't been able to see, so I was feeling kind of disappointed. But right as we were ready to walk out the door, she asked us again if we wanted to know the sex. We still did. And she told us we were having a girl.

There were only two possible answers she could have given, and we'd thought equally hard about either possibility. We would have been equally happy with either outcome. But still, hearing that we were going to have a daughter was one of the most indescribably wonderful moments of my whole life. I didn't stop crying for about three hours, I was so happy (and hormonal, of course).

Sophie sucked her thumb for the *entire* 20 week scan (here she's lying on her back, head to the left, arm at the top):


From then on, she was Paul's "wee girl", and she's still called our "wee girl" a whole lot of the time. When Paul got home from work that night he went online and started looking up fairy princess castles and My Little Ponies. I was protesting that *my* daughter was going to be a tomboy whether she liked it or not, but he wouldn't hear it at all. She was his little princess right from the start, and she always will be.

Give and take

Sophie has a very cute but also unbelievably annoying favourite game at the moment- she likes to hand her toys to other people, one by one- all of them, no matter how many are around her- and the receiver then has to hand them back one by one. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. It frustrates her quite a bit when she hands her toys over to smaller babies, then expects them to hand them back over. She's pretty relentless.

It's hard to say no, though. She has the cutest face in the whole world.