Keegen Turns 2...ur...I Mean 3!

Keegen's birthday was April 22nd. Really?! Keegen is already 3? My my how time does fly...

Here comes the Birthday Boy!!

One of our new favorite books

We floated a couple balloons in his room the night before and hung streamers in front of his bedroom door. And we had the traditional yellow cake with chocolate frosting cupcakes with/for breakfast. I'll stick with that combination until one of them decides to have a different opinion! He opened his presents in the morning, too.

For his "party," the family met at Itz for lunch. Itz is sort of like Chuck E. Cheese. A pizza/pasta/salad/hot dog buffet. Rooms to eat in ranging from a sports room, a cartoon room, a drive-in. We chose the drive-in and watched Happy Feet in the dark while we ate. Then we went to the game room and played until we were out of credits. His favorite game? Not sure, really. We all enjoyed the duckpin bowling. Bode and I bonded over skeeball. The boys liked the racing games. We had another cupcake after games and for a party favor, B and K each got a Bakugan and were very excited since our 10-year old neighbor just introduced them to them just the day before and they think they're super-cool.


At three, Keegen, you're a hoot. Loud and fun and silly. Non-stop talker. And still a little lover when you want to be (lots of hugs and NO! ON YOUR MOUTH! kisses). You've realized you have an opinion about things and don't necessarily go with the flow on everything, but for the most part, you're still easy-going. You have no interest in riding your trike, but you're riding a two-wheel scooter surprisingly well (your gift from Gma Di & Gpa Bill this year). You play well with Bode and try your darndest to keep up with him and his friends. You're not a great eater, but will eat an entire flat of berries in one sitting if i'd let you. You are a very social kid and go up to complete strangers everywhere and strike up conversations without the least bit of hesitation. You are excited about your baby sister and talk about her while patting my belly. I'm so glad you're ours!

STAR Center

Doug and I drove up to Denver last Wednesday to check out the STAR Center and sit down for an intake interview with the coordinator of the clinic. The STAR Center is an occupational/auditory therapy program specifically for sensory processing disorder started by Lucy Jane Miller, sort of the guru of SPD research and treatment. I mentioned in a previous post that we wanted to see if this was an option for Bode since his current therapy program, while effective, just doesn't seem to "stick" and is not realistic for our family (to continue as diligently for the next two years as we have been for the past year).

We walked into the office of the STAR Center and the room was covered in Boulanger's, one of my favorite artists. As the coordinator walked us down the hall for our interview i looked around at the gym and felt very emotional and thought, "This is the place for him!" We talked for about an hour and a half, covering everything from his pregnancy/birth/developmental history, what our specific concerns and goals are, what treatment he has had; etc. We took a tour of the gym and different treatment rooms (all fun. OT wouldn't work if it weren't just a lot of fun). All in all, it's awesome. It's intense. They combine OT with an auditory therapy that i think Bode would benefit from. We would drive up three days a week for an hour of therapy each day. After six weeks there's a two week break followed by four weeks of just two days of therapy each week. And then, hopefully, we're done. She said some kids never need to come back and others come back every 6 months or so for a "tune-up" consisting of a week or two of therapy.

This sounded great to me. After a full year of very intense home OT (approx 1 1/2-2 hours per day/5 days a week) the thought of spending just 30 sessions and possibly being "done" was very appealing. Then she talked to us about the costs. $900 for an evaluation. $6200 for 30 sessions of therapy. Of which $0 will be covered by insurance (they are not a part of any "network" and we have an HMO. We've always been happy with our HMO but know they won't cover a dime).

We've been mulling this over a lot. One of my concerns is, so, we pay $7000+ and what if we still don't see long-lasting effects? What if it just turns into a very expensive playdate (he functions so well once he's comfortable, this is how i felt when we went to regular OT. They didn't really know what to do with him since he seemed fine after a short while)? And other concerns. But we looked into ways to finance it so our savings wouldn't take such a huge hit. We were leaning towards doing it. I scheduled everything (and my summer calendar is crazy now).

Then i sit back and really look at Bode. He really is doing so well. Yes, we've had some major issues/regression in the past 3 months, but he seems to be turning around. We still have a long way to go, but is STAR the way to get there? We know that his current therapy works. Is there a way we can change it so it works for our family? So it's not such a bone of contention in the house? So we can maximize the positive from it and give it the time we've been told it needs for it to "stick."

Another concern with proceeding with STAR is my pregnancy. I had high hopes that this pregnancy would be different. Or at least as good as Keegen's where i made it to 28 weeks before needing bedrest and a lot of meds. I'm not doing so hot. At 19 weeks, I'm already taking one medication every 4-6 hours and another med is being called into the pharmacy right now (and i don't have the greatest confidence in my OB here afterall. I feel like he's blowing me off and i don't appreciate that feeling). I don't want to start therapy for B only to have it interrupted midway.

So Doug and i sat down and talked about things last night. Doug sees a lot of positive improvements with Bode and we agree that STAR is not for us right now. We're going to figure out how to make his home programs less painful and get B back on track. We'll just have to work together to continue in the right direction. We're a good team. We'll keep STAR in our back pockets. If we think we still need help in the future, we'll reconsider. I'm glad we looked into it and it's nice to have options.

Time for an Update? This is like 12 posts in one. Beware.

Hmmmmm. I was sort of losing the "blogging bug" before i got pregnant, but apparently, pregnancy is a surefire way to lose interest in blogging altogether. I think about blogging and think, do i really want to torture everyone with the nitty-gritty mundane of what things have been like day to day? Do i want to record the neglect to myself and my family the way i'm feeling has caused? Feel free to skip, but here's what i can think of to write about, in bullet form.

• First off, my mom and her tumor. No news, really. I've been totally unimpressed with the neuro department at Johns Hopkins. They have not contacted her at all. She received her routine MRI results in the mail, she had to call them to find out what to do next which was to see a neuro-opthamalogist for baseline field vision screenings. We ASSUME this is because the tumor is again on her optic nerve. The N-O doc told her he ASSUMES they will wait three months and reevaluate. My mom got a referral in the mail that says for her next MRI at the end of May that they need "thinner slices" (views within the brain) so we ASSUME the first scan wasn't clear enough or they just want a clearer view this time. Her neurologist has never called and she doesn't feel like calling them. So, we ASSUME she's a candidate for the gamma knife since they aren't sprinting to take care of the problem. Kind of annoying. I wouldn't be able to tolerate it, but my mom seems fine with the no info/wait and see "plan." I would be a basketcase. She's hanging in there.
• Me. Well. I'm 18 weeks today. While i feel much much better and no longer vomit on a daily basis, i still feel like crap pretty much all the time. But i'm eating and drinking and sometimes have energy to take care of my children and the house. I made dinner the other day and actually CLEANED for the first time in 3 months yesterday and felt very much like people should bow down to me when i do such things. I'm still taking anti-nausea drugs, just not as often. And really, do they help? I don't know but i take them when i can tell i'm "on the verge" and it seems to get me through. And i have to say, when i was pregnant with Bode and had all the preterm labor problems from the time i conceived until delivery at 35 weeks, i remember thinking, "WHAT I WOULDN'T DO TO JUST HAVE NAUSEA INSTEAD!" And i remember my sister coming into my hospital room as i neared the end of 6 consecutive days (which should have been 24-48 hours) on magnesium sulfate to stop my labor at 20 weeks with Bode. So i have POISON running constantly through my veins but it's relaxing my uterus and giving my baby a chance at viability. And she comes in 3 months further along than me, puts her feet up on my bed and complains about her unrelenting nausea and FAT SWOLLEN ANKLES. At the time, i thought, Really?! But NOW? Oh hell, i totally get it.
• Since i have sonos every two weeks to monitor my cervical length, i get lots of peeks at the baby (at least there's a perk to the previous problems, eh?). We tried to see what variety of baby we have last week, but the position the child was in? Not conducive to peeking. And kind of a freaky, ugly position, really. Extreme fetal position. I actually had to ask the sonographer if the baby was OK. It just looked wrong. So, thanks to the poor positioning, we've had to wait to start the spending frenzy...Just kidding. But we are planning on putting the boys in the same room so we still have a guest room and they are super-excited about that. And they want these specific racetrack/racecar wall decals to decorate their walls RIGHT NOW. They don't care or understand that first we have to get Keegen into a big boy bed. Then we'd like to buy actual beds (a bunk bed that we'll use as twins until Keegen is a bit more trustworthy/won't-need-a-helmet-in-his-bedroom) and see how things will fit in the room so we know where to put the decals. I hope the excitement lasts when it comes to actually sharing a room. Oh. So my next sono is Monday. Hopefully we'll know what we've got then. And no. I don't care if it's a girl. This pregnancy is not an attempt to claim the unclaimed daughter that apparently i've always wanted since that's what everybody says to me. Really, i think a boy would be easier. All i want is HEALTHY. Healthy, healthy, healthy. Oh and YES. This pregnancy was PLANNED since that is seriously the first question out of just about everyone's mouths when they hear my news. Not Congratulations! Now you can get that girl you've always wanted (that's the second thing out of their mouths), but WAS IT PLANNED? Practically strangers and people have said, Well, was it planned? Tacky. I am not one who can deal with such "surprises" or "accidents" and i know all too well how to use birth control effectively. Was it planned. Pfft. (i do have to admit, i know i brought that question on somewhat since i would tell people i was done. But as you all know, i was just trying to convince myself of that and when people would ask when we were having another, rather than saying NONE OF YOUR *$@!#$ BUSINESS, i'd say, i think we're done. But these aren't the people asking the question. Seriously. People i barely know in my ward. Etc. OK. New subject).
  
• I have quite the pregnant belly. But it's been about the same size since i "popped" a few weeks ago, so now i worry about intrauterine growth restriction and pregnancy induced hypertension since i have these non-stop killer headaches that don't respond to Tylenol or excedrin (no blurry vision or epigastric pain though. Phew! ;)). Sometimes, having been a labor and delivery nurse for so long can be a real killjoy.
• Now that the nausea is more manageable, it's apparently time for the contracting to begin. True to form. 18 weeks. Gotta love it. I get weekly progesterone injections that help decrease preterm labor in women with previous histories. I got them with Keegen and know they helped immensely. My doctor wanted to start at 20 weeks, i told him we'd start at 16 since i start contracting at 18. So i got my first shot at 16+ weeks and the nausea came roaring back (gotta love progesterone). I didn't have this problem with Keegen but i didn't have nearly the nausea with him as with this one. So i had a bad week last week with the nausea and thought, well, i'll wait to get my next shot until my next appointment, which would be about 11 days after my first shot, and just a few days late. That way i could see if it was causing more nausea and maybe we could wait till 20 weeks like my OB originally planned. Where was i last night? Complaining on the couch about my crampy belly. And this morning i was palpating and counting contractions debating calling my OB or riding it out till Monday. I called, told him i'd consciously skipped my shot, that i am again a true believer in them and asked for procardia to get me through the weekend. I took procardia and terbutaline through both my pregnancies. I'm too early for terb to be effective yet (you develop terbulaline receptors around 20+ weeks). Thank goodness for modern medicine. Hopefully once i'm back on track and getting my weekly injections, things will be chill for awhile. I made it to 28 weeks with Keegen before needing to go on bedrest (i remember soon after we moved here from Maryland, my cervix shortened from 4cm to 0.9cm in two days. It was then that my laid-back, mellow, Colorado Rocky Mountain High OB started taking me seriously!).
  
• I will be so interested in one day taking a look at my uterus and seeing if there's an obvious reason why I can't have a non-contracting uterus when it's occupied. I figure at some point, i'll be like so many other ladies and go in to have my bladder yanked back up into its correct position and have my uterus removed. It's got to be deformed. Missing a side. Have a septum running in the middle of it. Something.
• In non-obstetrical, woe-is-me news, i'm totally and completely burned out on Bode's home OT programs. Can you believe we've been at these programs for an ENTIRE YEAR?!! Holy freaking cow, man. And i just don't have it in me anymore. I have a bad attitude and get grumpy at him too often over getting the programs done. I feel like the positive benefits of the programs are being negated by the negative interactions we have surrounding them. This is not an every single day issue, but it's more often than it should be. And i don't see myself accomplising 2 hours of programs 5 days a week with a newborn. I just don't. Some other supermom, maybe, but not this one. I mistakenly thought we'd be done with programs sometime this summer. I mean, he's done so incredibly well. But when i talked to Donna about that, she said, "OH NO. He'll be doing these programs for at least another year. If not two." I.just.can't. So, on Wednesday, Doug and i are driving up to Denver to talk to the people at the STAR Center. THE sensory processing therapy center in the country. IN DENVER people. I caught wind of it before we got involved with these home programs. And the home programs have been a huge blessing and we've seen incredible results. And he's maintained a lot of new skills and abilities, but i've seen some regression lately and he still needs some help. I'm curious about this program and feel like i need to investigate it. It's IN DENVER! Did i mention that? I can't not check it out when it's in my own backyard. I do feel, for lack of a better term, badly that at this sign of regression, i'm looking at other options. Kind of like, "Hey thanks, but this is getting too hard and i'm just looking for an out" but, like i said, i can't get him through a mile of creeping and crawling everyday for the next two years. And looking at the STAR Center's website it mentions that brain research shows that SPD responds best to short, intense bursts of therapy. We've really only had longer duration of therapy. Regular OT was not intense and would cycle every 3-4 months. This home OT is intense but looooong. Anyway. Wednesday. We'll see. It's just me and Doug first to talk to them. And then if they think Bode warrants an eval, we'll do that next. He is so much better than when we started and so much better than a year ago, they might look at me like i'm crazy. But i want them to see him. We're out of the obvious "this texture on my hands puts me over the edge" sensory issues and into the social anxiety and bad habits that having had sensory problems bring. And i just want people to see him who do nothing but work with kids with SPD and know what is OK and what is not. Wow. I'm rambling. I want my kid to be happy and healthy and well-adjusted and comfortable in his own skin! Is that too much to ask? OH, and while we're in Denver, we'll check out the bunkbeds we have our eye on. That should appease the boys for awhile.
• Keegen turned THREE last Wednesday, but i won't wrap that post up in this heinously long one. It deserves it's own post. Not just a bullet! Although my bullets really just separated the long paragraphs from each other!