We're home-

Oh- what a weekend it turned out to be for us. Not because of the therapy but because Liam and I both got sick. I have horrible laryngytis and Liam was running a fever and coughing (which would help him gag and then vomit). Luckily he is on the mend now with no fever, just a pesky little cough. I on the other hand am still feeling yucky. I will chalk it up to not nearly enough sleep so I am quite a bit drained. And no one can hear me talking.

ok- onto what everyone wants to know...

I loved going to this therapy with Carla. I watched her do 6 sessions with Liam and I was thinking for a lot of the time that it didn't look like she was doing a whole heck of anything. But when you watch a little closer you realize she is constantly feeling his muscles as she moves his limbs and back. Because Liam has neuro injuries, his brain doesn't tell his muscles how to work like a healthy baby's does. He misfires his muscles and he still flails around like a newborn. What Carla did was feel Liam and move him, when he allowed her to, in order to show Liam that he can form new neural pathways to move his body properly all by himself. Does that make sense the way I wrote it?

She never forces Liam into any position or force his muscles in anyway. She does not want to inhibit the process Liam needs to learn to use his body. The fact that Liam doesn't keep his head up yet is not her concern. She wants to see Liam progress out of his newborn movements. Liam needs to gain awareness of his body in space and the feeling of moving his limbs in a natural way and this therapy can teach him how to do that. We need to see Liam get on his own learning curve just like a healthy baby does. I'm thrilled with this therapy because it just makes sense. Liam doesn't know his body isn't working right. He doesn't know he is supposed to be doing things in a different way. But he can learn how to acheive these proper movements when we give him the opportunity to form these new neural pathways. It's shown wonderful results in kids with CP so we are praying that Liam will respond and open his mind to free his movements.

The hard part for me is that Carla wants me to be very observant about how Liam does over the next couple of weeks. And I'm not very good at that. I am going to try but it can be tough when so much is going on in my daily life. I do believe that Liam moves his legs more freely than he did before our sessions. He movements feel smoother, less jerky. If you saw Liam laying on the floor, he jerks his arms and legs instead of moving them smoothly and he is constantly moving them. After this weekend, it feels to me that his legs are moving smoother. It will be interesting to get my PT's persepective tomorrow. I am hoping things can work congruently allowing the best of both worlds for Liam.

We are scheduled for more ABM therapy for Dec 5-7. Carla said she wants to see Liam get on his learning curve and then we can space out the appnts farther. Of course, if I'm not on board I wouldn't go, but I definitely feel it's the right thing to do to help Liam progress.

I'll leave ya with something cute Liam did before we left...

I was feeding him in the living room on our couch when Rylie pulled up my blog. She went to the older video of the kids playing with him and making him laugh. When the video got to the part where they said "how big is Liam?" he started laughing. It was so sweet because 1) He heard this coming from the tv which was far behind him 2) He recognized the words 3)He laughed at it several times. I kept telling Rylie to rewind it and she videotaped him laughing at an old video of himself laughing. It was sweet for me to see him recognize it. It's very hard when you don't get those visual clues to know if he understand yet what we are saying. But this was a clear response that he understood what was being said!