I Have a Speaking Engagement!

Colorado Early Intervention called today to ask me to speak at their October staff meeting! I am hoping that once I speak at the meeting that I will be able to make contacts in the other school districts and perhaps some of the birthing hospitals. I am so excited!

Medical Update

We went to the feeding clinic and I liked the 4 ladies in charge of Wyatt's case. There was a special needs pediatrician, a nutrinionist, a speech/feeding therapist and a psychologist. They reinforced what everyone else has been telling us - Wyatt is on track developmentally - I love to hear that! Anyway, they think that Wyatt should do really well with eating after surgery. They may have to work with him on how to suck on a straw as he doesn't use this action to drink his bottle like a non-cleft baby. Pretty "small potatoes" in the grand scheme of things. They did have me transition Wyatt over to Pediasure, which is very fattening and comes in vanilla and chocolate flavours. (I think you can tell by the pics that he's chunked up a bit.) The only thing is that the Pediasure is $10 for 3 days worth of meals. That's about $100 bucks a month! An alternative is to mix 8oz of full cream milk with Carnation Instant breakfast (which is about half the price), but Wyatt isn't tolerating this mixture as well. I'm really uncomfortable with feeding Wyatt flavoured milk, but he seems to be chunking up already. I'm working on seeing if I can get the insurance company to pay for the Pediasure since its been prescribed by a Dr. We'll see...

The genetics appointment was disapointing. They said that even though his x-rays came back negative for SED, that he still may have the condition and that we should get the test done again in 3 - 4 years. The geneticist was mostly concerned that Wyatt isn't on the growth chart for length instead of the fact that he has a cleft! I explained that all I wanted to know was what caused the cleft and what chance did we have of having another baby with a cleft. He said he didn't know what caused the cleft and his "guess" was that we had between a 5 and 50% chance of reocurance. He then continued on with Wyatt's height. I told him we expected Wyatt to be short - look at us! So anyway, he next suggestion was for me to get an x-ray to see if I have some condition and to have more blood tests done on Wyatt for another mutation - this time of the growth gene rather than the collegen gene. Apparantly ,this test is 100% accurate and if Wyatt tests positive it will be good news - its an isolated mutation and doesn't involve any other symptoms like the syndromes we've been looking at. Plus, this particular condition can be treated with growth hormones during adolescence.

I am growing very wary of the gentics people though. The 1st genetics guy though it was Stickler and guess what? - His main field of study was Stickler. This guy thinks it might be the growth gene and guess what? - His main field is growth. So...I just don't have muich faith anymore. I'm beginning to think we will never know - and perhaps that's just the way we have to leave it. I think I'll go through with this lots of testing and then if they can't tell me anything definitively I'll give up for a few years. Maybe its just too soon to tell anything. I don't know.

Go Raiders!

This one's for you Sandy! You said you expected a pic of Wyatt in his Raiders outfit - here it is!
The other pic is of Wyatt showing us what the Raiders will do to the competition - we're gonna eat them!

Where's The Remote?

Any time something goes missing I look in the catbed behind the couch - its become Wyatt's favourite place to hide things - including himself! He loves it when we "find" him. Not sure that Chief appreciates Wyatt moving in though.

Bug Loves the Vacuum Cleaner

He follows me around everywhere while I vacuum. He crawls as fast as he can to catch up with me and to try to throw himself on the vacuum. Hilarious!