Casting: Day 1

Well, this morning I woke up after a wonderful nights sleep! Yep, Leah slept through the night perfectly! I still can't believe it! I was so worried about sleep and she was wonderful!

Leah woke up and ate breakfast. I've decided that at meal times we will do one food that is for lefty, that Mommy won't give in and feed her! To make sure she is getting enough food, I will spoon feed her something on the side. This is the only time Leah has been frustrated, thus far. She loves to eat and this is something hard for her. Anyway, this morning, a waffle was her lefty food and she did great with it. I helped her along and she did very nicely. I spoon fed her a bowl of cereal and milk.

I also have to say, Leah's OT is just fantastic! She is away on a conference today and she called me first thing in the morning to check on us! She's just so sweet and caring, we are so fortunate to have her in our life!

After breakfast Leah got a short nap and then Nadine, our PT, came over. She checked Leah's cast and said it looked better then she expected. Like I mentioned yesterday, the cast was not placed on properly because of my squirmy little girl. There is a large fear that Leah will wiggle out of the cast, which we are hoping is not going to be the cast. I am constantly reaching my hand in to grab her fingers and adjust the cast. It's very loose. So, Nadine re-adjusted the cast and did a bit of OT work with her, but since it is not her forte, she did more PT. Leah is doing great at crawling and pulling up still. This morning she showed off her cruising skills. Nadine is still concerned about her knee locking and we will hopefully try some knesio tape next week. Every week, I pray that she is going to tell me that it is looking better, but that hasn't been the case yet. She was very impressed that Leah has been standing on her own for about 30-45 seconds. Leah didn't show that off today though, I mean, I don't blame her--her balance is pretty out of whack! All in all a good session.

I do see a bit more use of lefty, when she is thinking about it or highly motivated. Right now, in regular play she is very content to bang her cast on everything, including me, OUCH! I keep trying to not get discouraged and I keep telling myself that this is just the beginning. I guess I had other thoughts on how this was going to go. I didn't expect the cast was going to "cure" her, but I thought I would see a little bit more focused movements. When I spoke to Lisa, our OT, this morning, she said that her goal was not focused movements at this point and that what she would like to see is Leah being more aware of lefty. Everyday, I guess a little more at a time is a good thing.

I think Leah's biggest frustration is food. She is a grazer, loves to snack all day long and she really can't do that with the cast on. She just doesn't have the ability yet to grasp a cracker and bring it to her mouth on her own. This makes it hard for her to snack in her favorite places, the car, the shopping cart at the store and in general just playing around. I keep worrying that she is hungry, and we have been doing more scheduled snacks during the day. She doesn't nurse during the day anymore and she hates whole milk (we only started last week), she usually will snack on a piece of cheese, so I'm trying to load her up with yogurts and cottage cheese at meal times.

Blog spot was not letting me upload the videos from yesterday, I will try again later.