Last Friday was our first “big” meeting with the Early Intervention folks, so I wanted to outline how that went.

Three kind ladies came over; one was the EI coordinator that I had met with the week prior, one was a physical therapist, and one was a speech therapist. They introduced themselves, shook hands, took shoes off, yadda yadda. Very polite and kind, which I only bring up because this was a somewhat unnerving meeting for us. It’s easy to just write out what was happening and leave it to a series of events, but underneath everything there’s that feeling of “Wow, my kid is really in Early Intervention.” It was nice that the introduction to all of this was in OUR house and with non-clinical… humans. I felt that they were very considerate of the situation.

After the introductions, we basically got right to playtime with Alex. The ladies watched how he moved, cooed, reacted to us, etc. He was very well-behaved and even put on a bit of a show. After about twenty minutes of observation, the physical therapist made note that Alex was heavily favoring his right side, especially when laying on his back. She said that this wasn’t a MAJOR concern, but was still somewhat of a concern that we’d want to work on. She showed us a few exercises that we could perform and also emphasized that we’d want to give Alex a little more tummy time. None of that came as too much of a surprise. Shannon’s very perceptive and had noticed that Alex favors his side, and her equally perceptive mother had noted the same thing. As far as neck strength, we were admittedly much better with ensuring that Taylor had plenty of tummy time when she was a baby. I think a downstream effect of the gutpunch we received with Alex’s hearing loss was that some of those things fell more into the background. The physical therapist rated Alex as being somewhat behind where he should be at his age, but not by much.

The speech therapist noted numerous times that Alex was doing wonderfully with his cooing and eye contact. Hearing about his little speech was another both-good-and-bad moment. Great, he can coo, but he can’t hear himself and he’s going to stop eventually. The positive outweighed the negative, though, and we were thrilled when the speech therapist put his cognitive and speech skills ahead of Alex’s age. At least we have a little buffer! It was also nice to hear it validated that his eye contact was solid.

The next step of the meeting was to develop the plan. It was emphasized that we would be able to make any changes or tweaks as we go along and as we learn more about what’s going on with Alex, so we didn’t have to worry at all about oral vs. total communication or anything like that. That kept things pretty basic.

The output of that plan:

• Alex will have a physical therapist that will check up on him once a month to see how he’s doing with his neck strength and to ensure that his right-side-favoring doesn’t become a real issue. Again, the PT wasn’t extremely concerned, but she did say it’s something that we should keep an eye on before his muscles get too used to the imbalance and it becomes more difficult to fix. Shannon and I actually like the idea that he’s going to get that individualized attention and have yet another set of eyes watching him for anything that might come up.
• Alex will go through Buffalo Hearing and Speech for his audiological needs (hearing aids, etc). No surprise there.
• Alex will have a speech therapist – I’m interested and excited to see what comes out of this at this young of an age.
• Alex will have a teacher of the deaf. I asked what this person would be doing because I honestly didn’t know, and we were told that, for example, this person can make recommendations on what kind of toys we can get for Alex that are visual, how we can organize things for him, etc. I’m also really looking forward to working with this person and picking their brain.

We’ll have four appointments a month, and they’ll all be tentatively targeted to happen between 1:00 and 3:00 on Fridays at our house (which is huge!). That’s when Taylor naps and when Shannon’s mom is watching the kids, and it’s also one of the easier times for me to work from home or take PTO. I plan on being at as many of the appointments as I possibly can be. I really like the idea of Shannon’s mom being so involved because she’s a huge part of our kids’ lives. She’s already expressed how excited she is and she’ll take copious notes. Her readiness to do everything she can for Alex comes as no surprise.

That basically wraps it up. It was a whirlwind of activity that lasted for about an hour and twenty minutes, but I felt like Shannon and I soaked a lot of really good information up. We’ve DEFINITELY stepped up our game with the concerns that the PT brought up, and it feels good to be working on something with him / for him. I think we’ve already seen some progress; we’ll definitely keep it up.

My attitude toward Early Intervention is becoming increasingly grateful – I LIKE that Alex has all of these people who are going to be watching out for him and helping us know how to best steer him along the way. It’s like he has a team dedicated to helping him kick ass even above and beyond his hearing loss.

Next up – we have an appointment at Buffalo Hearing and Speech this week that I mentioned a few posts ago. We’re hoping Alex gets fitted for hearing aids and that we learn a bit more about the oral and total communication tracks that are offered. This Friday we’re supposed to have a follow-up meeting with the NICU Alex stayed at to follow up, but we’re hoping we can get out of it on the basis that we’re already in Early Intervention and getting evaluated, so there seems to be little point in wasting time by re-iterating that all is not honky dory. If we have to go to the meeting, however, we’re hoping to line up an appointment with the Genetics department there to get that moving along while we’re there. The hospital isn’t exactly next door to us and Shannon and I are trying to streamline these meetings wherever possible for the sake of our bosses’ sanity.

In other news, Alex continues to become an awesome kid. He’s very smiley and is starting to laugh a little more consistently, and he’s generally pretty easy going. He loves his family. I’m getting less sad about looking at him during these moments and getting my chin up higher as time goes on. It’s nice to see some of the initial pieces coming into place.