FET Update and Noah's 1st PT Appointment

Yesterday morning I woke up bright and early for my CD1 ultrasound and blood work. One bummer about moving out of the city is that I now live about an hour from our clinic. Thankfully it's summer which will make this cycle a little easier. Everything looked good, but they want me to come back tomorrow for a more detailed ultrasound to investigate the spotting I've had all month. Their guess is that it's a side effect of starting birth control on CD1 of my last cycle and the addition of the pentoxifylline around the same time, but Dr. A. wants to be sure it's nothing more concerning. Nothing ever seems routine anymore. Sigh.

My bandage and shirt coordinated. I'm such a stylish infertile.

In the afternoon I drove about another hour to Noah's first PT eval/appointment. As I mentioned in a previous post, I've had concerns about his gross motor skills, primarily his ability to run, jump, and balance. The PT was really sweet (but unfortunately 9 months pregnant, ugh) and had him do all kinds of little exercises to determine the cause of his difficulties. She had him hop on little colored discs on the floor. Initially when she asked him, "Can you hop like a frog for me?" he replied in a sad little voice, "No, I can't." (We need to work on some self-confidence, too!) But then she demonstrated for him and he immediately found great pleasure in hopping across the discs. She pointed out that he seems to spring off from his left leg. Then he walked up and down stairs for her. She noted that he always steps up with his left leg first and down with his right leg. This indicates that he's not using the muscles in his right leg very much. He's left-leg dominant. So she had him balance on one foot at a time and determined that his ankles cave in towards each other, with the right ankle being worse than the left. This causes him to favor using his left leg because he has more stability on that side. He also sometimes walks on his toes so that he doesn't have to depend on his ankle joint. She recommended orthotics for his shoes to improve his ankle stability, and exercises to increase the strength in his right leg. Some of the home program is for us to put a sparkly sticker on the foot that we want him to lead with on the stairs. Should be interesting! I just hope it all helps him so that I don't worry about him as much on play equipment. His coordination was judged to be just fine, so that helps too!

Showing off his jumping skills.

Since we were in our old neck of the woods, we stopped by Val's house for dinner and playtime. Noah and Livey had a total blast hanging out together. All through dinner they made silly noises, toddler jokes, and lots and lots of hysterical giggling. Think they missed each other much? I feel lucky that I found Val to be Noah's daycare provider. I ended up making a friend as well. Now we're on the hunt for a preschool for the fall. We looked at a place right next to my husband's high school today. I want to see at least one more place for comparison, but it felt like a good fit and he definitely had fun exploring the rooms and playground. It's also a heck of a lot cheaper than what we had been paying for daycare, and they won't charge us over the summer like many other places will. It's still a little hard for me to think about Noah being in a center setting, but I know it will be good for his preparation for kindergarten. And hopefully he can make some same-age friends up here, too.

Toddler antics