Simmi is continuing to deteriorate this week. She developed a fever two weeks ago. It is really unexplained why she even got the fever in the first place, because she doesn’t have any symptoms of being ill. We thought that maybe she aspirated some water she drank because of her reflux. When we got home that night she was coughing a lot and screaming. She no longer gets up in her crib to jump or run back and forth. She doesn’t sing in her crib either. Her “language” is becoming less and less with fewer pronounced words. When I say “her language”, I mean HER language. Her jargon is not as complex as it once was. Sometimes she will keep her mouth closed and try to talk. She doesn’t say baby, “baah” for bath, “pee-pee” and those kinds of things. Now she is just moaning or mumbling. She is often confused about what she wants. She reaches her hand for something and when we go to give it to her she starts to cry and says no. She has started instead to say “dauby” again. It seems like we are going backwards in her development.
This is how it seems to go consistently each day…
We go into her room to give her a bottle and she is just laying there. She is happy to see us, but she no longer gets up all excited and jump on the mattress. She just lays there and doesn’t move. We give her the bottle and leave the room for a while, and when we come back in to take her out of the crib, she’s still laying there. Usually we take her out, put her down and she goes bolting out the door into the living room. Lately it has not been that way either. We go to put her down and she starts to scream and if we put her down anyway she just collapses on the floor. We pick her up and bring her into the living room and the only thing she wants to do is watch something on TV. She prefers to sit on the couch next to us and eventually she gets up and begins to walk around. Her walking is a little off balance, and she drags each foot as she walks, with her legs more spaced apart than usual (looks like she has a big load in her pants). Her knees start to buckle and she will go over to her little table and lean on it. She no longer jumps a lot, which she used to love doing, and she will run down the hall fairly well until her head goes over the top of her body and she loses her balance and falls. Her constipation is worse than ever. At 19 months old she was over the 90% percentile in height and as of last week she is now in the 25% in her height. Her weight is in the 10% percentile. When they last measured her head she was in the 90% percentile and now she is in the 75% percentile. She also started grinding her teeth again. She doesn’t do it all day every day, but she does do it. She is taking less interest in doing things also.
We have been in Rio Rancho for almost 6 months now, and in NM for seven. I continue to improve in my health, but Simone’s progress seems to be coming to a stand still. My husband has been unemployed now for two months (we’re keeping our fingers crossed for a new job that just opened up), and our biggest need is getting the flooring done. We don’t know how this is going to happen. We needed to rip up all the carpeting in the house and what we are walking around on now is bare concrete. We need to get some sort of laminate, or cork onto the floors as well as area rugs. Simmi has been in homes that have area rugs and she hasn’t broken out from it. Carpet is another story. Flooring and area rugs have a big price tag and it is going to take a miracle to get what we need. If we don’t get flooring in our home, when she falls it will continue to be very difficult for her. It’s bad enough that she keeps falling, but always falling on concrete is the worst of all.
Here is a video I took of her yesterday during her session with Miss Sharon. The video is just a short version of her stacking with blocks. I have other footage as well, but it is quite long. She started out using shaving cream at the beginning of the session, but we had to stop the activity because she started to break out on her skin from the stuff.
Tags: development, speech, talking, walking
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