Answered Prayers!

We finally got THE CALL from our neurologist yesterday... Noah's muscle biopsy came back NORMAL!!! Praise our Lord for taking care of my baby boy! Jamie and I are thrilled and grateful. I spoke with Dr. Valero for a little while to discuss our next steps and when Noah is sedated for his MRI on July 7, they will also take some more blood to look at thyroid problems and a CK (?) that will let us know about things such as muscular dystrophy and muscular myopathies. I hope I have that right, it's REALLY hard to understand him over the phone. Anyways, I believe that all this will come back just fine. Dr. V did tell me that he's had patients walk as late as 3 years old and grow up to be normal healthy kids. I think that will be Noah's case, except I think he walk sooner than 3 because he's doing so well right now.

Also, we were able to get in for an evaluation with Children's Hospital for physical therapy... the evaluation is July 30. So after that, we will know if/how long Noah and I will be in Birmingham for his "burst" of therapy.

Please continue to pray for Noah and his progress, as well as his upcoming MRI and tests.

Noah's 2 Year Check Up

On Friday, 6/19, we finally had Noah's two year check up. The reason it's so far past his birthday is because I wanted to get in with Dr. Crenshaw instead of the other docs in the practice. They're all great, but I just LOVE Dr. Crenshaw. Plus, Jamie and I were super nervous about discussing Noah's MMR vaccine. We made the decision to put it off at his 1 year appointment (against our pediatrician's wishes) and have since changed pediatricians. At Noah's 18 month check, Dr. Crenshaw understood our desire to hold off on it and was very supportive. So I was expecting that she would want to give it at this 2 yr. appointment. To our COMPLETE surprise, she told us that she would prefer to hold off. Reason being that when a child is developmentally delayed with an unknown cause, she said research suggests it's best to postpone the vaccine. She didn't SAY that vaccines cause dev. problems/autism but she said, she preferred to wait until we AT LEAST get our results from the biopsy or until Noah is 3 yrs. old when he's further along developmentally. Her reasoning was that right now, Noah is making good progress and if she were to give the vaccine and then he were to regress in development, then it would confuse us into thinking that it was the vaccine when it very well could be something else. I appreciate that SO MUCH, because most doctor's are so pro vaccinations that they will give them regardless if a child is showing signs of autism/delays at the 12 month checkup... then parents blame it on the vaccine. So it makes it really difficult to know if the child would have autism regardless of the vaccine or because of the vaccine. Does that make sense? Here's an example of what I mean, a friend of mine asked her doctor what she typically does if she thinks a patient might have autism at the 12 month checkup (would she mention it to the mom? -- she said not at this time), but that she would "make note in the child's chart of possible autism" then proceed with the vaccine, then at the next checkup, if the child is still showing autism signs, mention it to the parents. So that very well could be the explanation WHY so many parents are blaming vaccines for their child's autism. Anyways, in our case, because Noah is already delayed and the MMR has been linked with "causing" delays, we've been very confused as to what we should do. Needless to say, we were so incredibly thankful for Dr. Crenshaw's insight and after our appointment with her, I believe the key is to discussing it with your pediatrician and determining the right time for YOUR child... because as we all know, no one kid is the same! Now you know why I was adament about getting Noah in to see her! :) She's worth the wait.

Anyways, here's his 2 year stats:
weight -- 28lbs -- 50th%
height -- 36 1/4" -- 90th%
head circum. -- don't remember, but it was 97th% (which is normal for a child that's had surgery on his skull, their heads tend to be bigger)

So the trend in Noah's height/weight remains the same as it has since birth, still long and lean.... and he's top-heavy with his big head! :) haha... I say that with love!

New Tricks

Noah has learned a few new things... we've been working on them for awhile (months and months actually) so I'm SO excited that he's finally strong enough and figured it out! Noah now knows how to go from lying down into a sitting position! Oh my gosh, I can't even begin to remember HOW long I've been working with him on this... our hard work and persistance paid off! The other day I layed him down for a nap and he was crying... then it got quiet so I peek in on him and low-and-behold, he's sitting up! He's done it several times since them so I think he's getting the hang of it. Also, he is now trying to pull up on everything, he still needs some assistance getting completely on his feet but the big thing is that he WANTS to be standing up. The other morning, I was getting ready and he was sitting on the floor playing and I glanced over and he had grabbed on to the door frame and had pulled himself into a tall kneel. YAY NOAH!!! He is also cruising with assistance (only a tiny bit of assistance, though). He's constantly reaching for things that he can grab onto and pull up on. He wants to be walking and moving and standing... which we are SO SO SO thrilled about! And he's SO close to crawling... these new milestones are beyond HUGE for Noah!

We had another appointment at Children's Hospital on Tuesday, with Dr. Davis, Noah's Orthopedic Rehabilitation Doctor and their Physical Therapist. A little over a year ago, we discussed me and Noah living in Bham for awhile and letting him get intense physical therapy for about 3 months, 3 days a week but at that time, they were concerned that Noah wasn't able to tolerate that much therapy. We all revisited the issue again at this appointment and they now believe Noah can handle it. So Dr. Davis and Andrea (the PT) are going to get Noah in for an evaluation at Children's Ped. Therapy clinic and looks like Noah and I may be in B'ham for awhile. They call it a "burst" of therapy b/c it's really intense, 2 - 3 hours a day/ 3 days a week for a period of time (a month to 3 months). I'm so excited to be able to do this for Noah and feel like the benefits he will reap will be HUGE! Children's has all of the latest in physical therapy techniques so I'm really eager for Noah to experience it. Plus, like I told them, I don't work so that we can provide Noah with whatever he needs and if that means us living in Bham for awhile, so be it. The good thing is my aunt (my mom's twin sister) lives in Vestavia and has 2 spare bedrooms, so we would just stay with her. So please pray that they can get us in for the eval fairly quickly (it can take months to get in with them!) and that we can roll forward with this new plan of action!

Noah after he pulled himself into a tall kneeling position (how do you like my PT terms? :)

Mission Accomplished!

Thank goodness today's surgery is now behind us and Noah did GREAT! We had to be at Children's at 7am and they immediately took us back to a room to begin the pre-op stuff. They told us they thought the procedure would begin around 9:30... ummm not quite. We waited and waited... it was slightly frustrating b/c Noah hadn't not eaten since the night before and he could have juice only until 6am so he was going with basically nothing in his belly... poor guy. But he was in really good spirits and didn't fuss at all. Finally at around 10:45 they brought him a liquid sedative and took him back at 11am to get the anesthesia going. I had been so worried about him crying when we gave him to the nurse but he was so woozy that he didn't even look back at us as the nurse took off with him! Kind of hurt my feelings... :) not really, I'm glad he was out of it b/c it made it much easier than if he would have been crying! Anyways, the surgery took around 30 min. and they were finished at noon. He stayed in recovery for an hour, then they brought him back to us. He was really groggy but they wanted him to take some pedialyte to make sure he could stomach it without any problems, plus they wanted to keep a watch on his vitals. He did fine so they left us leave around 2pm. They gave him a shot that numbed his leg and said it would wear off after 5 hours so I've been giving Tylenol since this afternoon. He hasn't fussed or cried a bit today... and his leg doesn't really seem to be bothering him, despite the fact that they told us it would be really sore for a week. He's tough... I guess once you've had your head cut open, you can handle a little incision in your leg! :) Anyways, we made it home and since he wouldn't eat, I bought him a vanilla milkshake and he gobbled that right up. Hopefully, the incision won't bother him too bad and he'll recover quickly! I do want to thank you all so much for your prayers, texts, and phone calls. We sure have felt loved and supported. Now, we just have to wait out the next month for the results of the test. Luckily, we're going to the beach in 2 weeks so that will get our minds off things! Here's a few pics from the day.



Waiting for them to come get him for surgery



After surgery



He would not put that pedialyte down!

Watching Daddy Leave