An Early Christmas Present

I have been meaning to post since Tuesday, but this week has gotten away from me. We received an early Christmas present on Tuesday when Perron's PT and OT came to the house for his therapy session. The PT was the referring PT who did his initial evaluation for admittance into early intervention and his OT was with us for his entire eye appointment a couple of weeks ago. As soon as "K", his PT, came into the house Perron was all smiles for her. She must have said a million times how he was a completely different baby from the one she had seen the first time. Then "N", his OT, came and she could not believe the progress he had made in a week and a half. Here is the best part. She said that in her professional opinion he did not need to see the neuro-opthamologist. Both she and "K" said that if they had just met him for the first time, without knowing his vision history, they would not think anything was wrong with his eyes. WHAT A BLESSING! This is truly the miracle we had all been praying for and it happened. God is good to this family! So....I am going to cancel his neuro appointment and his appointment with the pediatric opthamologist. Can you believe it!?! We were so excited. I had been hoping that this would be the outcome but I hadn't wanted to dare that it was possible. When I told my mom she burst into tears and just cried and cried (she had been with me for the initial appointment when they said he might be blind). This has been such an emotional ride for the entire family.

This entire journey has taught me a lot of things. The first and most important is to never give up hope. Stephen and I never gave up hope that we would one day have a baby. We never gave up hope when I got sick and Perron was early. We never gave up hope when Perron was in the NICU. And even when things were at their hardest and I was at my lowest, I tried as hard as I could to hang on to hope even when I felt like all hope was lost. God has blessed this family and neither Stephen or I will take the little things for granted. Four months is a long time to wait for your baby to look at you and recognize you, but it makes it all the more worth it when he does. Now he will look at us and smile and he even laughed at me this evening. Truly music to this mommy's ears. We are forever grateful to all the friends, family and strangers who have taken this family under their wings and prayed for us. We appreciate it more than you will ever know. We hope this is the last time that kind of urgent prayer request ever has to go out on behalf of our family.

We continue to enjoy Perron more everyday. He has grown and changed so much in these past couple of days. His adorable personality comes out more every day. He finally weighs over 10 lbs (10 lbs 3 ozs to be exact) and is starting to get so strong. He is rolling over from his stomach to his back consistently now and can sit up if you really support him well through his trunk. We have lots of exercises that the therapist gave us to do in between sessions and it is amazing how much they help.

Thank you again for all of your love and support. We are blessed beyond measure!