2 years since we brought you home
Last week we passed the second anniversary of your homecoming from hospital, two days after your due date.
I was simultaneously delighted to get you home and terrified because you’d only been tube and wire free for 2 days of the last 95. And I’d had almost no sleep the night before in the parent craft room. I think our first priority after getting you in the door was to make a large coffee. 
You weighed 3.27kg, enormous compared to your original 855g. It was Friday and that night we said a special blessing to celebrate your survival and our first night at home together.
Being a parent Milestone moments: birthday due date
by Finisterre
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Happy 2nd unbirthday
Last weekend marked the second anniversary of Talia’s due date - June 20. (She arrived March 20.)
It says a lot about how far she has come that I didn’t even think about it much in advance. Last year I felt quite emotional and made a cake. This year things were pretty busy and then I looked at the calendar and it just dawned on me that this was the date.
So here she is 2 years ago - at “term” despite being 3 months old. She gained loads of weight in hospital and was 3kg when this photo was taken.
And last year - 15 months old, 12 months corrected. She struggled to gain weight after leaving hospital, and at her 1 year review was assessed as being delayed in all areas of her development. (Still very cute though!)
And this year, 27 months old, 2 years corrected. Her weight gain has improved, her development has caught up, and she is a delight. We are very blessed.
Sensory Processing
SENSORY PROCESSING
Sensory processing involves the registration, organization and modulation of different kinds of sensations entering the brain at the same time. It relies on the brain having an intact modulation system to attend to relevant information and inhibit (dampen down) other irrelevant information.
Most people are aware of the main five senses which give us information about what is happening in our environments. They are the senses of:
• Touch
• Taste
• Smell
• Hearing
• Sight
However, there are also two other senses that provide us with information about what our own bodies are doing. These are the senses of
• Movement (vestibular)
• Body position (proprioceptive)
When children have sensory processing difficulties (usually identified by an Occupational Therapist) it can affect things like their attention, fine motor skills, gross motor skills as well as how other children and adults perceive them.
How does sensory processing work???
Each of the sensations mentioned above have receptors within our bodies that register sensory input, for example, our receptors for touch are located within the skin, our receptors for movement are located in our inner ear and our receptors for body position are located in our muscles and joints. Once this sensory input is registered it then travels to the brain to be interpreted. There is never just one form of sensory input being registered, it is usually lots at once e.g. even when we are sitting still there are usually lights on, some sort of background noise and the texture of what we are sitting on etc. Hence the brain needs to sort out what input is appropriate and what is not at any point in time.
For example, if a child is sitting in class and they hear noise in the corridor, they initially attend to it by turning to see what it is, but after a while they will get use to it and are no longer distracted. However, for a child with sensory processing difficulties, if their modulation system is not working properly, the child may continue to attend to this noise even though there are more important things going on in class. This is why children with sensory processing difficulties find it particularly hard to work in a classroom situation as there are lots of sensory distractions.
Problems tend to be at either the registration phase or the modulation phase.
Children with sensory processing difficulties are usually one of 4 types
• Sensory sensitive
• Sensory avoiding
• Poor registration
• Sensory seeking
SENSORY SENSITIVE/DEFENSIVE
This type of child often receives too much information for their systems to cope with. The information is not being registered appropriately and hence is being given too much attention. This type of child comes across as:
• Fussy
• A complainer
• Distractible
• Cannot tolerate being too close to others and may push or bite them
• Cannot tolerate a normal amount of background noise
SENSORY AVOIDING
This child also receives too much sensory input to cope with but actively tries to avoid it. A child displaying these types of behaviours will actively try and avoid too much input by doing things like:
• Covering their ears
• Humming to themselves
• Choosing a quieter place to work
POOR REGISTRATION
This type of child is not receiving enough sensory information (either through the receptors for touch, taste, sound, movement, body position, smell or sight). They need a lot more sensory input than other children in order to concentrate and feel alert. However, they are not the type of children to seek out this input, hence they come across as having/being:
• Poor attention
• Lacking in motivation
• Uninterested
• Withdrawn
• Overly tired
• Apathetic
SENSORY SEEKING
This type of child is also not receiving enough sensory information (either through the receptors for touch, taste, sound, movement, body position, smell or sight). They also need a lot more input than other children to concentrate and remain alert but they do go about getting this input - hence the term SEEKERS. This type of child comes across as:
• Not being able to sit still in their chair at school
• Active
• Fidgety
• Excitable
• Standing close to or up against people
• Hums to self or talks to self during classtime
Development Milestone moments: language development speech
by Finisterre
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She can talk the talk…
(Warning: contains serious mummy bragging!)
What an amazing difference a year makes.
At one corrected (15 months actual) last year, we thought she might possibly be trying to say “cat” - but it was neither clear (”tat”) nor consistent (”tat” sometimes referred to random non-catlike objects) so we weren’t sure.
As it turned out, she was trying to say cat. Since then, her progress has been astounding.
This week we had her 2 year corrected review, and at 27 months of age her results are almost unbelievable.
Language development - 98th percentile for corrected age - 92nd percentile for chronological age, “representing a developmental age equivalent to 31 months for receptive communication and between 37 and 39 months for expressive language skills.”
Things she has said in the past week that made me stop and write them down I was so impressed:
- Oscar sitting on the chair, on the pillow
- There’s another little corn tin
- That’s pretty groovy
- No want Talia’s rocking horse at Mothers’ Group, no want Talia’s rocking horse with Talia’s friends
- Mum draw pink octopus like this octopus
- No want lying down
- No want talk to daddy
- There’s a beetle inside treasure box
- There’s a lizard up on the branch
- Mum washed Talia’s dog and bones ‘jamas
- That’s very good Talia
We have not only caught up with language, we’ve kissed the language delay goodbye and leap-frogged quite a few full-termer friends!
Free professional photographs of your very early prem
Did you know that if you have a very early prem (under 28 weeks), you can ask a professional photographer to come and take photographs of your child - for free? I had no idea this service existed until recently, but it looks fantastic.
This is from their website:
The Australian Community of Child Photographers (formerly known as the Australian Charity of Child Photographers) is a volunteer organisation of child photographers from all over Australia who have come together to form an organisation dedicated to giving the gift of photographic memories to families that have experienced stillbirths, premature and ill infants and children in the Neonatal Intensive Care Units of their local hospitals, as well as children with serious and terminal illnesses. The ACOCP is dedicated to providing this gift to families in a caring, compassionate and heartfelt manner.
You can read more about what they offer here: http://www.acocp.org.au/services/
According to the website, families in Perth should contact Loren Ioppolo on 0402 364 812 or email wa@acocp.org.au