Another Dylan Update

It's been awhile since I've updated on Dylan's status. He's still doing fabulous. We had two home visits with early intervention services to see if we qualified for any type of support for Dylan. The first visit was with Rochelle who specializes in specifically the social/emotional side of cases like ours. She makes sure that mom and baby are getting what they need. It seems that she sees all kinds of cases around social/emotional concerns. She was great. We talked for awhile just about his birth, how it was for Craig and I, for Zach and family in general. She was really great about understanding how hard a difficult delivery can be for everyone, not just baby and parents. She watched Dylan for awhile and gave me some tips on calming him and helping him cope with just normal baby excitement. She really didn't see anything to be concerned about. He's making great eye contact, smiling, tracking people and engaging in general. He's giving me cues about what he needs - verbally and physically. So all checked out with that side of things.
Next we had Becky come. She does a more thorough exam to see what we could qualify for - speech therapy, physical therapy, hearing, etc. She did a full work up on nutritional things, physical things and "played" with him to see what he was able to do at this point. Again, I couldn't be happier that we don't qualify for a darn thing at this time. Thank God, I didn't really want to "qualify" but at least we are on everyone's radar. It's comforting to know that I have resources to contact should I have a concern. Especially with Rochelle, she seems like someone (other than my mom and Amanda) to call when I'm just being worried about something to reassure me or help me get answers to my concerns.
This week, Dylan started reaching for things and actually making contact. I love watching him do new things. The last two weeks he's been all about studying his hands intensely to see if he can move them and see what he can do with them. Ah HA, they made it to his mouth and I believe we will have a finger/thumb sucker on our hands. If only he can figure out how not to gag himself with said fingers. Not much I can do to help that process other than tell him, "that's what happens" after he starts gagging on his fingers. It's a little sad but somewhat amusing because you think he'd figure it out.
All in all, he's doing fabulously. There are absolutely no current concerns other than to continue watching his progress. I did look into the APGAR score thing again b/c it seems when I mention it to people who know, they are alarmed by his numbers. He was a 1 at 1 min after birth, 1 at 5 mins and I believe, a 6 at 15 mins. I looked it up online and realized why everyone is shocked when I tell them. The "perfect" newborn gets the score of 10. 2 points for each of the five components. Typically they look for a 7 or higher at one minute after birth to know the baby doesn't need any intervention. I think Zach was like a 8. He was a little blue right off but was fine after a bit.

	Score of 0	Score of 1	Score of 2	Component of Acronym
Skin color	blue all over	blue at extremities body pink (acrocyanosis)	no cyanosis body and extremities pink	Appearance
Pulse rate	absent	<100	>100	Pulse
Reflex irritability	no response to stimulation	grimace/feeble cry when stimulated	sneeze/cough/pulls away when stimulated	Grimace
Muscle tone	none	some flexion	active movement	Activity
Breathing	absent	weak or irregular	strong	Respiration

Here's what I found on Wikipedia. He scored a 0 in all categories except for Pulse Rate which was his 1 b/c it never dropped below 60. For him to only be a 6 at 15 mins was a little scary. We are SO lucky that we were where we needed to be. I can't stand to think about if we'd been at another hospital with no NICU. I wanted to be at a hospital with a NICU and thank God I listened to my instincts and stuck with my decision.

I'm going to post a new video of him so you can see how great he's doing. It's just remarkable.