Saturday, March 29, 2008

She's all smiles!

Charlie smiled for the first time about 3 weeks after she came home from the hospital. I was amazed because that's a very appropriate age to begin smiling. For about a week she smiled a few times a day. New year's eve, her gtube site looked infected, so we brought her to the ER. She was very fussy and irritable, but after a little Tylenol, she perked up. I was sitting in the hospital bed holding her and I "beeped" her nose and got the biggest smile! She smiled about 7 more times that night. She had also started cooing a bit during that week. I was SO excited.

Unfortunately that was the last time I heard her voice or saw her smile for a very long time. She regressed in other ways too. I don't know what happened, but I have theories. That was about the time she started "jerking". I think somewhere in there she might have had a bad enough seizure to cause her to regress. She was also put on antibiotics then that apparently she was allergic to. She had a few bad respiritory episodes a few days later and, I don't know, maybe it was traumatic and caused her to regress.

Anyways, I was very discouraged for a very long time. But recently she's started smiling again. It's been about a month now and she's getting better at it and more consistant. Rarely a day goes by that we don't get at least one little smile from her. She's also found her voice again. She's been sighing, grunting, and cooing. She doesn't do it often but she's definitely learning that she can have emotions and reactions between happy/quiet and pissed off/crying.

I'll post a smiling picture as soon as I can. It's hard to get a good one because we never know when she's going to surprise us with a little grin.

No comments: