Our Happy Baby and Another Surgery!

Greetings all! I know it' been a long time since we've updated this blog with any news. We have been busy busy busy. I don't think we ever realized how many specialists existed! It seems every week there is at least one (if not two or three) doctor appointments and/or procedures/tests. Add to that the therapists that come to the house 2-3 times a week and it makes for a full calendar. Fortunately, *almost* everything has been positive so far, with just a lot of follow up appointments to make sure he is on track.

Just a few of Cameron's exciting medical updates:

• He is off his oxygen during the day, and we hope he will be off it soon at night.
• No more wedge/sling positioner in his crib! He's sleeping on his back with NO apnea!
• He is down to only one med a day. When he came home, he was on 4.
• He is still gaining weight like a champ, and almost gaining too fast. :) We found out his pump was calibrated wrong and has been giving him a little extra food at each feeding.
• We are slowly weaning the nighttime continuous feeds...finally!
  

And some exciting developmental updates too:

• He was finally approved for state funded services, so he now gets physical, developmental, and speech/feeding therapy every week.
• He really loves playing with his toys, moving them hand to hand, bringing them to his mouth, and throwing them.
• He has amazing head control and loves to sit up in his bumbo, or in our laps and look around at stuff.
• We get huge smiles all the time now, they were few and far between for while. Still working on that laugh, but you can tell he's trying to laugh and he'll make little sounds.
• He talks almost as much as daddy. :) He is just a little chatterbox and loves to tell us what's on his mind.
• We're thinking that rolling from back to tummy will be coming any day now. He has really been getting some momentum rolling side to side.

Overall, Cameron is a very happy baby. He loves to play and smile and talk. He doesn't seem to notice or care that he has any medical issues. Needless to say, that makes all of this a lot easier for Mike and I to handle. It's hard to be upset about the hand you've been dealt when you have such a happy little guy to play with and cuddle.

Our biggest challenge now is Cameron's upcoming surgery. He has recently been diagnosed with a condition called metopic craniosynostosis (also known as trigonocephaly). Mike and I noticed the ridge on his forehead from the time he was in the NICU and everyone always seemed to think it was 'normal'. We had asked about it at several doctor appointments and the answer was always something like, "yeah, babies can have weird shaped heads, it's not abnormal." Well, fortunately Mike was very persistant about it and finally at a pediatrician appt she referred us to a neurosurgeon. It took the neurosurgeon about 1 second to look at Cameron, and say, "oh yeah, he definitely has craniosynotosis. We'll need to operate to correct it." His surgery is scheduled for May 20th and it is a pretty gnarly surgery. He should be in the hospital recovering for at least 4-5 days. Fortunately, this should be the only surgery he needs and we have one of the top surgeons in the valley doing the surgery. He is actually the director of Neurosurgery at Phoenix Children's hospital and on the Phoenix Top 100 Docs list. We are confident the surgery will go well, but I think this scares us more than anything else so far.

Please keep saying prayers for Cameron! Hope you enjoyed the recent pics on picasa.