High Risk Infant Clinic

Since Gabriel was born so early, he is eligible for Swedish Hospital's high risk infant clinic run by two of the neonatologists. They check in with you at the adjusted ages of 6-months, 1-year, 2-years, and 3-years to make sure that you're child is progressing well and that you are getting whatever extra help you may need. Gabriel saw one of the neonatologists that had been working with us since his ventilator days. She wasn't there when he was first born (apparently they move around to different hospitals), but she was around for most of his stay. She was very happy to see him! In general, Gabriel seems to be doing very well. He's a little behind in some motor development, so we will be sticking with the physical therapy, and of course he is way behind in the feeding department, but we knew that too.

The only other issue that came up is that he may have some lingering lung issues. We've been noticing him intermittently quietly wheezing for awhile, and when she listened to his lungs, she could hear it too. She recommended that we see our pediatrician about it and perhaps put him on an inhalent drug for a little while. We'll try to get an appointment, not with our regular pediatrician, but with one we saw in Tacoma who turned out to have a speciality in pulmonology. We have yet to find a regular pediatrician we are completely happy with. Gabriel is such an individual case that the questions we have don't always fall into the routine parent questions or even the routine preemie parent questions.

Anyway, back to the neonatologist who does understand our child. One thing she said which was very interesting is that since the preemie brain develops outside its natural environment [the uterus], it forms connections in different ways. What this means for us is that we need to pay special attention to the way Gabriel processes things and learns. He may not form associations and learn the way a child that developed to term would do. This doesn't mean that he's impaired, but it means that he may need to have information and processes presented to him in different ways than we would think. Apparently, this shows up about the time kids enter school since school is such a structured system that tries to treat every kid the same way. It will be interesting to see how he grows and develops.