Evening update (Thursday 1/15)

A busy day for Max. He had speech therapy, physical therapy and of course the standard workout with his mother. Carolyn reports that his breathing seemed relatively easy today, with a respiratory rate well below the tachypnic levels from earlier this week. Max is going for longer and longer periods without setting off his oxygen saturation alarm. His monitor displays the time and severity of the four most recent such episodes. In the past few days we've noticed that the gap between the earliest and latest alarms shown has been growing. When Carolyn got to the NICU this morning, the oldest alarm was actually from the previous day.

Speech therapist S. arrived in the afternoon when Max was a little cranky. By that time, Max had had his vitamins and was fairly gassy. She spent a lot of time trying to calm Max down. Nonetheless, Max got some work done on his pacifier, and otherwise showed signs of oral competence.

Physical therapist J. arrived after Carolyn had been working with Max for half an hour. Max did well moving his head, cycling his legs and centering himself. Max had his monthly assessment, so J. checked the four reflexes of infancy and conducted other tests. The bottom line is that he's made a lot of progress. J. would like to see him move his head more but of course he has a very big head. His state control is better than before. They seem quite happy with his progress.