Happy Month 2!

Happy 2 months!

Looking back, time does seem to go by so quickly. When you are in the midst of it though, the newborn period seems like dog years (1 day seems like 1 week). Today we celebrate 2 months of knowing our sweet baby Matthew. He likes to sleep, loves to be held, cries a little, eats when we make him, and smiles just as he’s drifting into sleep. The 4 of us (Alyssa, Jackson, Darren, and I) fall in love with him more and more every day.

We finally downloaded the pictures from the last 2 months and they can be found here.

The update on Matthew’s latest doctors’ appointments:

-Today we had our 2 month visit with our pediatrician. As I expected due to his unusual fussiness yesterday, Matthew has an ear infection that we’ll treat with antibiotics. This is not a big surprise given that he’s been congested for over a month. We’ve got a follow up appointment with an ENT to see if there is anything behind the persistent congestion. Hopefully he can help!

Matthew is growing, but our pediatrician is a bit concerned because he’s falling down the growth curve (not gaining as quickly as they would like). This happened to both Alyssa and Jackson as well. So, we aren’t sure whether the slide down the curve is (a) a normal Hoy baby (b) a bi-product of the congestion (c) ‘typical’ for his uniqueness or (d) concerning and a possible bi-product of his feeding problems. If it is A, and he’s like Alyssa and Jackson, he’ll stay on the curve, but hang out at the bottom 1-10th percentile. If it is B, hopefully we can get the congestion addressed at the ENT and he’ll pick back up. For C, I’m following up with the genetic counselor to see if we might need to track him on his own curve. If it is D, we’ll have to address it most likely by assisted feeding (ie tube feeding). We are praying it is not D!

The geneticist recommended we follow the typical immunization schedule, as did our pediatrician. I struggled with it, knowing how important immunizations are but also being concerned that there is so much unknown about Matthew’s uniquenesses. At this appointment, Matthew got his first round of immunizations.

-Last week we visited w/the urologist and nothing new there. We have a follow up with him in 6 months.

-We continue to see an Occupational Therapist on Mondays and practice his exercises ever day.

-Our next big follow up appointment is another diagnostic ABR (hearing test) in mid-May. We pray that his hearing either improved or remained stable compared to the previous test.

Thank you for keeping Matthew and our family in your thoughts and prayers. We know they’ve made a difference!