Chase with his Physical Therapist

From Mom and Vicky href="http://picasaweb.google.com/mkatwilson/ChaseSJourney">Chase's Journey

Chase had two doctor appointments today. The first one was with the orthopedic doctor. They checked his reflexes and his hips, and asked some questions to assess whether or not the vertebral stenosis was causing any problems yet. They said everything looked good. We'll see them again in 7 months when Chase is a year old and they'll do another MRI to look at his C1 vertebrae. Next month they set us up for an appointment at Children's Mercy South with another orthopedic doctor who specializes in skeletal dysplasias. I kind of get the feeling that some kind of surgery will definitely have to be done at some point down the road, but hopefully not. You never know.
After that appointment we met with Dr. Gratny, Chase's primary doctor. He's gaining weight appropriately and even said we could stop waking Chase up in the middle of the night to feed him...YAY!!! We'll take his cues, and if he starts crying in the night, then we'll feed him. She also gave us what is called a Passy-Muir trach, which is a "speaking valve". It will allow him to make baby noises, goo goo ga ga, and we can hear him cry. She put it on him for a few minutes and it took a couple seconds for Chase to figure it out. I guess it is a little more difficult for him to exhale and takes some getting used to. So we have to break him in slowly. We're so excited to be able to hear what he sounds like, even his cries! I miss not knowing his sounds so much. Chase also got his immunizations today, and said he looked great.