ANNA'S HOME WATCH

THIS PAGE CONTAINS ISSUES OF "ANNA'S HOMEWATCH", WHICH PROVIDES PERIODIC UPDATES ON ANNA'S LIFE AT HOME

Anna 's HomeWatch Week 1 (Issued January 16, 1997)

Hey, some of you appeared interested in finding out about how Anna's new life was going since the "Breakout" (a term premies use for some reason to describe their discharge). She's appears to be prospering in her new environment and is basically acting like any other newborn as best we can tell without having had one before (you know, they don't come with an owner's manual). Probably the biggest news is that Anna has really started to pack on the weight--she added five ounces her first week home and tipped the scales at 4 lbs. even at her doctor's checkup this morning. You can almost see her growing--hands and fingers elongating, cheeks puffing out, torso getting longer and broader. In fact, she moved out of premie diapers two days ago and into the newborn size. Although still tiny, she is getting to be more of a handful.

Anna is wolfing down her bottles at an incredible rate, but sometimes getting her to burp is a bit of a challenge. She gets fed every three hours, and Mom and Dad have complex negotiations over the less than coveted midnight, 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. feeds. Between meals Anna sleeps well, especially during the night, and has had no trouble getting used to the more sedate setting of home. She tends to be awake for a couple of hours in the morning and evening, and off and on in between. For a couple of days earlier in the week, she had crying fits during the afternoon that lasted for quite a while, but they seem to have diminished since then. About a week back, tears started appearing with her crying, which can be ear-piercing despite her tiny size. She is really a pacifier baby, and it helps a lot in settling her down. Anna is doing more and more experimental smiling--but it's hard to tell if it's a real smile of happiness or not at this stage. Her eyes are changing color--they started out blue but appear to be moving in the brown/green/hazel direction, so combined with the blue they look grey. In terms of hair growth, let's just say we keep her hat on most of the time.

We had three travelling nurse visits to the house over the past week, which have since been discontinued. One nurse thought Anna looked very pale, but she has very fair skin and the doctors at Georgetown did not appear concerned. Anna has weekly appointments with a local pediatrician group whose staff is knowledgeable about premies. Anna also has follow-up appointments at Georgetown next week to see how she's progressing in general (Tuesday) and to have her eyes checked (Wednesday). Her apnea monitor has basically not alarmed since Anna came home. If this continues we may be able to get rid of it altogether in a few weeks.

As for Mom and Dad, we're making the adjustment to full-time caregivers with its attendant sleep deprivation and other challenges. By comparison, life at the hospital was more intense and stressful, but not as constant--there we could leave when we needed to get away. One of the difficulties of caring for a premie is that due to their special care needs the parents have no ability for quite some time to get away together and catch their breath. Given the need for someone trained in CPR to be with Anna at all times, one of us has to always be home. And we can't take her out because of the risk she'll get sick. But we are greatly enjoying every second at home with her, and still marvel that this is the same baby whose life began in such peril. To give some idea of how normal life with Anna has gotten, we totally missed her four month birthday on January 12 until a couple of days later--quite a difference from counting the hours.

Those who check up on Anna's home page may want to pay it a visit. We've added quite a bit of new material, including additional pictures, the most recent Annagrams, updated weight gain information, and words of support received from family, friends, and other parents of premies during Anna's hospitalization and in response to her homecoming (as detailed in historic Annagram Day 118).

Hope you all enjoyed this update.

Love, Anna, Kelsey, and Craig.

Anna's HomeWatch Week 2 (Issued January 23, 1997)

We're flattered to announce that Anna's Home Page was named one of USA Today Online's Hot Web Sites for January 23, 1997! The site is one of a handful listed in today's on-line issue. I was cruising through USA Today On-line late last week and saw that the technology editor has an area where he solicits names of neat sites for the paper. So I dashed off a quick note about the world's neatest miracle baby, and the rest is history. You can see the hot site reference at:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ch0123a.htm

The number of "hits" on Anna's page almost doubled today alone.

Incidentally, Anna is doing great. She had a great checkup at Georgetown on Tuesday, tipping the scales at 4 lbs., 3.5 oz. She has some mild reflux so we got an over-the-counter medicine for that, and Kelsey was admonished to breast feed more often (Anna prefers bottled breast milk these days because it's less work than nature's delivery system). Anna returned to Georgetown on Wednesday for an eye checkup, and they do not need to check her eyes again for another four months.

Love, Anna, Kelsey, and Craig

Anna's HomeWatch Week 4 (Issued February 3, 1997)

This Wednesday will mark Anna's fourth week as a free woman, so we thought a HomeWatch update would be in order. Overall, she is doing great, and things can best be described as pleasantly boring. She had a good checkup today at Georgetown, with no major areas of concern except the fact that her weight gain is still not moving along like the doctors would like it to. As of this morning she weighed in at 4 lbs., 11.5 oz (her weight seems to fluctuate a little between the scales at Georgetown and those at her pediatrician's office). She is basically off the bottom of the charts in terms of length for a baby her age, but her head is a little bigger--which is encouraging because the rest of her will tend to want to catch up with her head over time. The doctors predict she will reach the 25th percentile in size for females. Her muscle tone is also a little weaker than they would like but within acceptable limits. Anna received her second dose of RespiGam today, an IV vaccine which takes about four hours to administer and protects her from the menacing child respiratory virus RSV. Afterwards she had a bit of an elevated heart rate and fever but the lead doctor agreed it was o.k. for her to go home.

On the home front, Anna continues to adapt well and seems comfortable most of the time. She has a fairly predictable crying fit in the evenings somewhere in the 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. time frame (it's going on behind me as I type), which can last up to a couple of hours. The best way to comfort her during these events is to put her in one of those papoose carriers (a gift from our good friends the Bangerts) that holds her against your body, and then walk her around. Most of the time, however, she is extremely good-natured and sleeps or slurps on her pacifier and makes little squealing and squeeking noises. She sleeps very well at night, except that we wake her every 3.5 to 4 hours for a bottle. She gets about 40 cc's per bottle (increased to 45 today) spiked with a little rice cereal for extra calories, and usually gives us a good burp after 30 cc's and then finishes the bottle off.

Anna is starting to get little fuzzy blond hairs on her previously bald head. Her future eye color remains a mystery--they now look greyish brown on their way to either brown or green. When she's wide awake, Anna appears very alert. She sometimes looks away when you look at her, but then you'll also catch her staring when you look away. She has begun experimenting with smiling, but not in response to any particular stimulus, and has become more responsive to noises, including our voices. From a wardrobe standpoint, Anna is now wearing the big 4-8 pound premie clothes and newborn diapers (Huggies fit her well because they are a little smaller). We are enjoying watching her little body develop, and in the past week her legs have sprouted out, fattened up, and become quite a force to be reckoned with.

Kelsey and I are doing our best to manage the fatigue associated with late night feedings, and we trade off in ways which enable me to be fairly rested on work days but allow her to catch up on her sleep periodically as well. We are extremely careful about protecting Anna from potential colds and flus, and on the advice of her doctors generally keep her isolated from other people and especially little kids. We are now scrupulous hand washers to the point of paranoia, and get really worried whenever one of us has a scratchy throat. We're starting to decompress a bit from the excitement of the past fall's events, and we're hoping things remain on their current pleasantly boring course.

Thanks for your continued interest in our tiny miracle.

Love, Anna, Kelsey, and Craig

Anna's HomeWatch Week 5 (Issued February 12, 1997)

Today is Anna's five month birthday and her five week anniversary at home! My how time flies when you're half asleep. It's been a bit of a tough week for the little Tyke and her parents. Dad has had a bad cold since Sunday, so Mom is working overtime and the house resembles a surgical ward--masks, rubber gloves, and medicine. Kelsey has described her life as an endless cycle of producing milk, mixing milk, giving milk to Anna, and cleaning up the milk after it's been processed (or spit up).

Meanwhile, Anna appears to have developed a pretty bad reflux problem (but knock on wood no cold as yet), which means her food tends to not want to stay safely secured in her stomach because something is underdeveloped in that area. Sometimes she spits up, but other times it just makes her uncomfortable. Although the doctors increased Anna's feeds to 45 cc's per bottle last week, the reflux and who knows what else is causing her to only want about 35-40 cc's (but why should we worry--our baby consultant Dr. Spock says babies know how much they need--but the doctors at Georgetown think otherwise). All this may be contributing to what has once again become a somewhat pokey weight gain--about 14 grams or a half ounce a day. She weighed in at 5 lbs. even at her Monday doctor's appointment.

The pediatrician wants to see Anna again tomorrow to follow up on the reflux and weight gain, and is also somewhat concerned with Anna's continued high heart rate--tachycardia in medical terms. Long-time readers will remember that the heart rate issue has been an ongoing concern that was never attributed to a single cause. The pediatrician has recommended that Anna have a test to determine if the reflux is severe enough to warrant prescription drugs, and has also advised that a follow-up echocardiagram to check Anna's heart be done earlier than originally scheduled.

On the Oohs and Aahs front, Anna is making lots more little cooing noises, and continues to flirt periodically with the idea of smiling. Her evening fussy sessions have thankfully gotten shorter in duration. She continues to sprout very blond but still rather sparse twigs of hair. Eye color remains indeterminate.

Hopefully the couple of concerns noted above will be minor blips on the radar screen and not amount to much. We'll keep you all posted.

Love, Anna, Kelsey, and Craig.

Anna's HomeWatch Week 8 (Issued March 6, 1997)

Anna is doing very well as she approaches, believe it or not, her six month birthday next week on March 12. She has really been socking on the weight of late, gaining 1 lb., 3 oz. in February (almost her entire birth weight) to tip the scales at 2265 grams, or 5 lbs., 14 oz., as of March 3. We are hopeful she can continue to avoid getting a cold or flu, something her parents have been less successful at. Her upper GI test done a few weeks back at Fairfax Hospital showed some reflux but no other major problems, and the doctors have not put her on any prescription medicine for it. It appears to be improving on its own as she gets bigger. We had her in to Georgetown on Monday for her Respigam treatment (you may remember that's the all-day IV vaccine she gets once a month during cold season to protect her from that nasty lung virus called RSV) and a check-up. No major health issues appeared to concern the doctors at that time. Her resting heart rate has come down from prior visits to around 150 beats per minute. She remains on her monitor, although it has not shown evidence of heart of lung problems for some time, and we will probably get rid of it altogether in about a month. We're getting tired of the thing, and leave if off whenever Anna is with us. At the moment, her main problem is a nasty diaper rash that hit suddenly last Sunday. You are all welcome to share your favorite Home Remedies (that is, what worked on your kids).

On the home front, we have finally settled into a routine that all parties seem happy with and which leaves everyone relatively rested. Kelsey is probably going to stop breast pumping at the end of March--it's quite a hassle to do while caring for the little one, and she has accumulated so much frozen breast milk that our freezer looks like a dairy. Anna's evening meltdowns, consisting of crying fits which can last for several hours, have diminished a bit in recent days. We discovered that to some degree she just may be over-tired, since when we put her on her tummy she conks out. It's a lot easier to baby sit a sleeping infant than a screaming one. Anna now smiles regularly, providing something manages to amuse her. She's getting more and more hair on her previously bald head, too. It started out all blond but now has some darker streaks in it. Her eye color remains a mystery, as her eyes seem to go from blue to grey to green to brown over the course of a day.

We have updated her home page with new pictures from her sixth month as of today. You can see them at:

http://members.aol.com/crbright/annapge/annahm.htm

That's all for now. We'll keep you posted.

Love, Anna, Kelsey, and Craig.

Anna's HomeWatch Week 12 (Issued April 2, 1997)

Anna continues to do well and gained weight at a faster clip over the past four weeks. Today she tipped the scales at an amazing 7 lbs., 10 oz.! That's up from 5 lbs., 14 oz. at her last weigh-in during the early part of March. Shortly after our March 6 update Kelsey took Anna into Georgetown for an assessment with the developmental experts. They were very concerned that Anna was so far behind babies born full term at around her due date. They compared her against babies at 3 months, 11 days, even though Anna wasn't yet three months past her December 20th due date, and then gave Kelsey a grim pronouncement that Anna would be a slow learner and may not learn to read until she's eight. We were a bit amazed they could make such predictions from a fifteen minute exam. Without totally dismissing this prognosis, we did tend to discount it quite a bit, especially since Anna was so small for her age which affects her muscle strength and coordination. In addition, we have talked to friends with premies who received similar news yet their kids turned out fine.

A couple of days later the Fairfax County Early Intervention program's assessment team spent about 3 hours with Anna at home. They gave what seemed to be a more balanced assessment of Anna's situation, and avoided making long-term projections. Because of her small size, she was further along mentally than physically. Anna's ability to do things such as hold her head up and grasp objects was fairly limited. We have been working with physical therapists in the County program (they come over every week or two, and we have Anna do exercises they prescribed for her daily), and Anna has progressed significantly. She has begun to grasp objects and does so with more and more control and coordination. They gave us some small toys that are easier for Anna to latch onto. She is now able to control her head movements pretty well. She also gets a monthly visit from a speech therapist, mostly just to monitor her progress and make sure she is eating properly. Anna has gotten very talkative and makes a variety of creative noises. She is taking her bottles very well, with no signs of the reflux problem that concerned the doctors last month. We are feeding her bananas and other vegetables as a food supplement. Kelsey abandoned her breast pump a couple of weeks back because it became too difficult to find time to pump while watching Anna, but Anna is still drinking breast milk from the vast storehouse built up over the past six months. About two weeks ago we started letting her sleep through the night, a moment of great joy that I'm sure other parents in particular can appreciate. Dad gives her a 10:00 p.m. bottle, and she sleeps until around 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. Her former two hour evening meltdowns have diminished in duration and frequency, although she still tends to get a bit fussy around sundown.

These days, Anna smiles all the time, likes to look in the mirror, and in the past week has started watching television. Her blond, wispy hair is continuing to grow in but it's still pretty thin. Her eyes are still not settling in to a particular color, but lately we've been seeing more hints of green. Anna's favorite plaything is a Fisher-Price Activity Gym with hanging toys that cause music to play and lights to go off when she grabs them just right. We have also been getting her out for walks on nice days. Generally, however, we still limit her exposure to small children and the general public. Anna still has her monitor as well, but we only put it on at night or when she's sleeping, and she may get rid of it soon.

Tomorrow, we have to take Anna back into Georgetown for another all-day Respigam vaccine to protect her lungs from the RSV virus. It should be the last time she gets the vaccine this cold and flu season.

Overall, things are going great, and we're enjoying a gradual return to normalcy.

That's all for now.

Love, Anna, Kelsey, and Craig.

Anna's HomeWatch Week 20 (Issued May 27, 1997)

Hey, remember that little tyke we brought home at 3 lbs., 11 oz.? Nowadays she's somewhere over the 10 lb. mark and showing no signs of slowing down. Anna is a great joy to her parents every day. She smiles whenever she sees us, and often let's out a silly laugh like she just heard a funny joke. She recently made what appeared to be her first consonant noises--which I'm pretty sure came out as Da Da (Kelsey claimed she heard more "m" like noises). A couple of days ago, Anna turned over in her crib for the first time, but failed to see the benefits of it and has not since repeated the feat. She's also very alert now, and likes to furl her brow when she's thinking. She really enjoys walks around the neighborhood.

Anna's evening fussy periods continue, but we're quicker to put her down for a nap when she's agitated and that helps her (and us) a lot. She does a lot of standing when you hold her, but her arms are still lagging a bit behind in terms of strength. However, over the past week she has started to push herself up more and more. She started by lifting her head and shoulders, and has started to push with her hands as well. About a month ago, her previously voracious appetite fell victim to teething, which arrived complete with foaming at the mouth and other telltale signs (although no teeth as yet).

Anna has gotten big enough to play with regular newborn toys such a rattles and plastic keys. She is very adept at passing objects from one hand to another, and of course at placing anything within reach into her mouth. She continues to show all the signs of the chronic stubborn streak first evident in the hospital--a tendency directly inherited from her mother. When this stubborness emerges, Anna's face transforms into one big scowl and her high pitched whine slips into a mind-numbing shriek. She uses this behavior, and the threat of it, to control our household. We are powerless against it.

A couple of times over the past few weeks, Anna's heart and breathing monitor has gone crazy on us. Once in the middle of the night the low heart rate alarm went off five times. We stayed up with Anna to make sure she was o.k., and then took the monitor to Georgetown for a check-up (nowadays you don't actually have to take the kid to the doctor, just their machinery). It turned out that as Anna was growing, her normal sleeping heart rate was dropping into the 70 BPM range, which is fine except that the monitor was set to go off at 80 BPM back in January when that rate would have been a problem. So they reset it to 60 BPM and sent me on my merry way. Over the last weekend, her monitor started doing other weird stuff, and we got a new one. That one started acting up too, but now seems to be o.k. We don't know how much longer we'll need to have Anna on a monitor. She hasn't had a real episode of apnea or bradycardia since early January.

The last couple of doctor visits have been very upbeat, with no major issues of concern to report. Anna had an eye exam last week which indicated that both eyes are doing great. She will probably get fitted for glasses (or believe it or not contacts) at the time of her next exam toward the end of the year. Her hair is growing in quite a bit. It's some blend of blond and brown at this point. As always, Anna's eye color remains indeterminate. Her eyes appear to be some type of gray-blue-green-hazel mixture at the moment.

We bought a used minivan last week, thereby taking the final rite of passage into parenthood. Truth be told, we really like it. We took Anna on her first big trip over the weekend to visit Kelsey's father and his wife Peg in North Carolina. Anna travelled pretty well but at times got sick of sitting in her car seat and let us know it (see above paragraph on stubborn behavior).

We appreciate everyone's continued support. We'll continue to provide periodic updates on Anna's progress.

Love, Anna, Kelsey, and Craig.

Anna's HomeWatch Week 25 (Issued August 1, 1997)

Anna weighed in today at 12 lbs., 3 oz. She gained about a pound a month in May, June, and July. If you correct for her prematurity, her current weight ranks at about the 5th percentile (5%). Anna's pediatrician, Dr. Larkin, is very pleased with her progress, and indicated she has no significant concerns at this time. She does not want to see Anna again until around her first birthday. It sounds amazing to talk about birthdays already, but Anna will be one year old in less than six weeks. We're still pondering how best to celebrate the occasion.

A few weeks ago, we had a follow-up with the neonatal experts at Georgetown. They ran a test that indicated Anna's growth hormone level might be a bit low. We had a follow-up visit to an endocrinologist, however, who thought it was too early to get too concerned about Anna's size and advised a wait and see approach (we'll check back in with this doctor in a few months). The other news in the wake of the Georgetown visit is that as of early this week, Anna got rid of her heart and breathing monitor. Kelsey is elated. I was a bit more anxious about losing our security blanket but have made the adjustment pretty well (except for checking a couple of times a night to make sure Anna is still breathing)

Anna still does not have a great appetite. She only takes about 14 oz. of formula a day and some baby food such as carrots, pudding, or creamed corn (her favorite). She should be taking about 20 oz. of formula a day. The Georgetown doctor suggested we go back to giving Anna a middle of the night bottle (she eats well half asleep) to increase her calorie consumption, but we are not too thrilled with that advice and have yet to implement it. One advantage of having multiple doctors is that from the variety of things they say, especially when advice is not consistent, you can pick and choose the approach that makes the most sense to you.

Anna continues to make very good developmental progress. She gets physical therapy and speech therapy every other week to help her stay on track. Anna is now rolling front to back and back to front, and can stay sitting up pretty well if you perch her that way. She will occasionally tumble over. She loves to stand up (with parental support), and will walk slowly across the room if you help her. Anna does a better job of pushing up with her arms these days, but doesn't like doing it because her arms are still rather tiny and weak. She pushes up o.k. if you can get her to forget she's doing it by using a toy as a distraction. Within the past couple of weeks, Anna has started playing with her feet--an important step in strengthening her stomach muscles to help with sitting and other activities.

People who see Anna repeatedly guess that she's a newborn based upon her size. A while back, someone said, "Oh, how many weeks?" and was shocked to hear "36" as our response. But more and more they comment on how alert she is and how much personality she exhibits. She appears to have an infinite variety of expressions, and thrives on watching and studying people. Anna is generally a very happy baby and smiles or laughs easily. She is also more interactive, and now utters a wide range of noises and nonsensical phrases, often in response to comments from us. She will discover a new sound, try it out for a couple of days constantly, and then use it selectively thereafter. The sound of the week this week involved smacking her lips together and making loud kissing sounds. This can be misleading, however, because she is not a baby given to cuddling.

Anna's eyes are looking more green these days, but if you put her in a blue outfit they still look blue around the edges. Her hair has really grown in quite a bit lately, and consists of a shock of thin blond hair concentrated on the top of her head. Anna can still wear clothes for 3 month old babies, but is slowly progressing into the 3-6 month category.

Finally, Anna's favorite pasttime is getting totally soaked and swimming around the baby pool at our neighborhood recreation center. There, the "Miracle Baby" has become quite a well known attraction.

That's all for now. Hope everyone is doing well.

Love, Anna, Kelsey, and Craig

Anna's HomeWatch--Around Thanksgiving 1997 (Issued November 23, 1997)

We realized that some folks we are not able to stay in touch with on a regular basis haven't heard much word of the miracle baby's recent progress. We apologize for not sending out an update on the occasion of her first birthday. She had a great time partying with about 25 well-wishers and generally smearing cake all over the place. For us, the day represented a milestone and provided an opportunity to look back over the prior 12 months with gratitude for our many blessings.

Anna fills our every day with joy that is difficult to describe but which we're certain every parent experiences. In her waking hours, she attacks playing with the same intensity and zeal that she demonstrated during those critical early days and months at Georgetown. Anna is an extremely happy baby, quick to laugh or grin at any of the many things that strike her fancy. In particular, she appears to be an avid reader, and will entertain herself for hours turning the pages of a kid's book. Often it's upside down, but we're working on that. She also likes to pull off your glasses, and lets out a shreik that sounds a lot likeYeesss! when she succeeds at it.

She gets physical therapy in our home twice a week, and speech therapy once a month. The physical therapy seems to be helping quite a bit, and in recent days she has begun sitting up all by herself. She had been able to sit when placed in that position for a couple of months. Anna has developed a very efficient inchworm crawl which enables her to get around very easily. She is pulling herself up on her knees more and more and we believe true crawling is imminent. As I've been writing, her Mom called to me twice to say that Anna had just pulled herself up to standing unassisted. From a physical and developmental standpoint, Anna is around the 8-9 month level. Her sounds and speech are more advanced. For comparative purposes, she is about 11 months past her due date (also known as her corrected age).

Anna continues to grow very slowly. She recently weighed in at about 14 lbs., 4 oz., which is around the 5th percentile for her corrected age group. Anna has never been a very big eater, a situation exacerbated by teething. She only takes about 15 ounces of formula a day, but we supplement this with baby food and other stuff like pizza crust, ice cream, and Cheerios. She currently has two bottom teeth and appears to be working on her top two to go with them.

A couple of weeks back, Anna came down with a fever and infections in both ears. The Doctors treated this successfully with antibiotics. A couple of days after that, she got a little head cold that consisted mainly of a stuffy nose. We were fairly anxious about these first ever incidents, but she never slowed down and quickly recovered. We took Anna into Georgetown around the same time for the first of her monthly winter vaccines called Respigam, which helps protect babies against the dreaded lung virus RSV. We had mixed emotions about getting her the vaccine, because it involves a four hour IV that is pretty traumatic for Anna. But we thought we'd err on the side of caution and go through with it.

Kelsey has been back at work since August, and both of us have had some time to distance ourselves from the whole premie experience. Having pretty much decompressed from those early difficult days, it's hard for us to go back and look at the early NICU pictures or read the early Annagrams. About a month ago, we spoke at a Georgetown graduate-level seminar about the whole NICU experience, which brought back a lot of memories. More than anything, Anna's early arrival has taught us to be thankful for all of God's little blessings and to take more notice of the special moments we might have been a bit inclined to overlook before. Above all, we cherish every second with our daughter. We wish you all the same fulfillment as you spend Thankgiving with your loved ones.

Love, Anna, Kelsey and Craig

Anna's HomeWatch--Or, Miracle Baby Walks (Issued February 24, 1998)

Anna took her first steps yesterday afternoon. After working most of a session with her physical therapist on standing and balancing, she took 8 steps to grab the tv remote half-way across the room. Kelsey unfortunately was out of town on business but is eager to see this breakthrough for herself. I got home just after those first steps. Hilde smiled and said, "We've got a walker on our hands." I then cranked up the video camera to record the moment for posterity. Anna was absolutely delighted with herself, and kept shreiking and laughing and clapping every time she reached her destination. In case anyone is curious, she is currently around 14 months past what was supposed to be her due date.

Anna's progression to walking occurred pretty steadily over the past two months. Right around Christmas, probably after watching her cousin Nathan crawling around on all fours, she started doing so, too. This ended several months of inchworm crawling that was her trademark around Thanksgiving. In early January, she started pulling herself up to standing and began doing more and more cruising around the furniture during February. This was capped off by yesterday's climactic event.

Anna is making steady progress elsewhere as well. She now says "cat" and "ma ma" with conviction. She continues to be an avid reader, turning pages for long periods of time by herself. Her current favorite is the classic "Is Your Mama a Llama?" Although the word "mama" is sprinkled throughout the work, when you read the book to her she says "mama" on the same page toward the end every time. Go figure. She is also fascinated with the tv remote. The other day she was playing with it and turned herself toward the tube to make sure she could change the channel. In our house that means it's time to get your own set.

On the health front, after a number of winter ear infections, Anna got a clean bill of health from an ear specialist last week. She no longer takes any medications except her daily vitamins, and requires no special medical care except the monthly Respigam lung vaccine she receives at Georgetown from November through March to protect against the nasty kid virus RSV. Anna is also eating much better. She loves vanilla yogurt and Cheerios. Her current weight is somewhere over 16 lbs., and she's becoming quite a package to hoist around. She sometimes throws little temper tantrums if she doesn't get her way, but then she's always had a pretty strong stubborn streak. Above all she continues to be a very happy, inquisitive little girl who brings great joy to her parents.

Love, Anna, Kelsey, and Craig

Anna's HomeWatch (Issued July 31, 1998)

Anna is continuing to do extremely well as she approaches her second--can you believe it?--birthday on September 12. For the past year, Hilde Rusten, an au pair from Norway, lived with us and took care of Anna during the day. Hilde did a great job helping with Anna's development, and saw Anna progress from learning to roll over and sit up to walking, talking and terrorizing the neighborhood. Hilde left us in early July and travelled around the U.S. for a month before heading home last week. We will miss her and wish her and her family all the best.

Anna now goes to school at a local day care center, where she has the opportunity to interact with kids her own age and will hopefully be exposed to the discipline we have failed to give her. We carefully weighed the risks to Anna's health of being exposed to the germs carried by her peers against the benefits of socialization. Ultimately, we decided she is strong enough and healthy enough to deal with whatever she manages to catch.

This week's catch was some kind of nasty cough, runny nose, and sore throat combination that kept her and her parents home for several days (we didn't get sick, but wanted to watch her closely). The doctors initially feared bronchitis but that thankfully did not materialize. Anna has also had a series of ear infections over the past few months that seemed to coincide with the emergence of each new tooth (ten total). These days, she's cutting molars. Each illness has hurt her appetite and led to some weight loss. She puts it back on quickly when she recovers.

Anna was initially timid at day care and cried when we dropped her off. That lasted for about a week. The second week she didn't want Craig to leave her but stopped the crying. By week three, you had to get her attention to say goodbye. The older kids are very protective of Anna because she is still very tiny. She holds her own with the kids in her age group, who are significantly bigger than she is. This is in part because she is very strong and solid, and in part because of her personality.

Anna's weight has been steady at around 17 to 18 pounds for the past few months. She seems to burn up lots of calories with her go-go-go approach to life. We are shying away from aggressive efforts to increase her size such as growth hormones, partly out of concern that she has already endured enough medical interventions to last a lifetime. Anna's eyes did finally did turn green and stay that way, albeit with tiny hints of blue sprinkled in to broaden her wardrobe options. And our once bald baby now has shoulder-length, wavy blond hair.

Anna is making significant strides on the developmental front, although we have given up trying to assess how she is doing relative to some measure of "normal" since that is so hard to define given her special circumstances. Anna's vocabulary has mushroomed over the past two months. Her recent linguistic breakthroughs include the following:

Food Stuffs: cook-cook (cookie), pop-pop (pop tart), Ba Ba (bottle), chip (chip) -- Only the best nutrition for our baby.

The Animal Kingdom: Kitty Kat, mow (meow), Dog Dog Dog, f-f-f-f-f-f (whoof), and s-s-s-s-s (the sound the Boa Constrictor Makes--don't ask), and Duck Duck Duck. She can identify many more animals in a picture book if you ask her to "find the ______". This apparently is the payoff for her early and avid interest in reading, which continues with an even greater sense of urgency today. Now she sticks the book in your face, says "Aaah, Aaah," and plops down in your lap for the story. Then this is repeated, say, two to three hundred times a day.

Other: Out, Up, Ba (Ball, as in, "get me the"), Hot Hot (used for any food item above absolute zero), and Foot.

Moreover, Anna is able to understand much more than she can say. Her nonverbal repertoire includes showing us "How Big" she's gotten, where her tummy, nose (well, she points to her mouth, but close enough), belly button, shoes, and socks are located, and pointing to where her hat goes. Anna also responds to simple commands such as "close the door" (by closing the door). Her favorite game starts with Daddy saying "I'm gonna get you". This causes Anna to run shrieking to her Mother and dive into her harms. Our guess is that no other child has ever done this.

Anna has become a very mobile and well coordinated toddler who runs everywhere with abandon. She is fascinated with going up and down stairs and climbing in and out of our local baby pool. Today, we took her to the adult pool and she started flinging herself off the ledge into our nervous waiting arms.

By our calculations, all of these things are occurring exactly on schedule for a baby born at 1 lb., 5 oz, at 26 weeks gestation who is now 23 months old. Aside from her smallish size, Anna demonstrates no other obvious signs of her prematurity. She is generally very pleasant, happy, and good-natured, and exhibits the first hints of what could turn into a devilish sense of humor. Sometimes it almost seems as if Anna knows how fortunate she is to be here and is intent on taking full advantage of the precious gift of life. She helps us keep things in perspective.

In terms of parental challenges, Anna remains a stubborn child (but we're supposed to use the term "goal-oriented" according to Parents magazine) who is not above shrieking, banging her head on hard objects, or pulling her hair when she doesn't get her way. Feeding Anna can be a chore, especially after a couple of minutes of sitting stills wears thin on her. Sometimes it isn't easy to slow her down at the end of the day. But she does sleep soundly for about 12 hours, and we are very thankful for that.

The story of Anna's early arrival may be appearing in a book on premies one day soon. We submitted a ten page narrative describing her harrowing start to two authors compiling a volume of premie experiences tentatively titled, "Living Miracles: Stories of Hope from Parents of Premature Babies". We'll keep you posted on their ongoing efforts to find a publisher.

Finally, for those who have access to the internet, we have continued to maintain and update Anna's home page with more recent pictures and other neat stuff. You can access it at:

http://members.aol.com/crbright/annapge/annahm.htm

Alternately, try searching the net using keywords such as "Anna premie home page", and she should pop up.

We hope everyone is doing well. Please think about Anna if you're ever down and wondering if prayers are really answered.

Love, Anna, Kelsey, and Craig.

Anna's HomeWatch Week 104 (Issued January 8, 1999)

It's hard to believe, but Anna came home from Georgetown University Hospital two years ago today. She continues to amaze us with her progress and lust for life. She starts every day with a big smile and a devilish laugh, and until the wheels come off around 7:30 at night, or unless she doesn't get her way, she keeps smiling and laughing throughout the day.

Since our last update at the end of July, 1998, Anna has continued to battle with a series of colds and ear infections that appear related to her entry into the germ-laden world of day care last summer. During mid-November, the doctors sent her to a specialist who concluded that the ear infections were limiting Anna's hearing to 40 percent of its normal level. We also suspected that this was affecting her speech development. We made the decision to have tubes put in Anna's ears, and she successfully had this minor surgery just before Thanksgiving. She has only had one ear infection since, compared to one every other week before. A follow-up exam indicated Anna's hearing had returned to normal. Just before Christmas, she got a flu-like virus for the first time, and gave it to her parents, who had a lot more trouble with it than she did. We then gave it to relatives we visited the whole way up the east coast.

Anna's weight has stayed about the same. Although she has gotten longer, she currently weighs in at around 18-19 lbs (18 lbs., 10 oz. as of this morning). That's at the bottom of the percentile chart for her age group. Each time she gets sick, she stops eating and loses ground, and then picks back up again when she gets better. She is still not a great eater, and we struggle to get her to consistently eat several full meals a day. In a pinch, she is always willing to gobble McDonald's french fries, and eagerly yells "ambugguh" whenever she sees the golden arches.

Aside from Anna's small size, we are still unaware of any long-term problems resulting from her prematurity. However, she remains at risk for learning disabilities which could show up when she gets older. Overall, she has handled the transition to day care well, and is very adaptable in social situations with kids of all ages. Her gross motor skills are a little behind those of her peers, but not to any great degree.

We are fortunate that this winter Anna no longer has to endure the all-day Respigam IV lung vaccine against the RSV virus once a month. They have developed a new vaccine called Synagis that can be administered via injection by a nursing service that makes house calls. The whole thing only takes about an hour. They even come on Saturday, so we don't have to take off work for it.

The improvement in Anna's hearing has been accompanied by an explosion in her verbal capabilities. It began around Thanksgiving, when she started using more complex words like "microphone" and "octopus". She now regularly utters phrases such as "take a bath" and "make it feel better". Her vocabulary has expanded to include hundreds of words. It's fun to watch her grapple with sounds that are new. She uses "abaca" for both "Elmo" and "airplane".

Anna has become addicted to Teletubbies, a show for infants and Toddlers put out by the BBC that many American parents believe is England's current form of revenge on the Former Colonies. This has changed our lives. On the one hand, we are going broke keeping Anna supplied with all manner of Tubby merchandise, including talking dolls of Tinky-Winky, La-La, Dipsy, and Po, along with puzzles, clothing, and the latest Tubby videotapes. If there is one piece of Tubby merchandise anywhere in a store, Anna will find it. On the other hand, you can now put on a Tubby tape and buy yourself a half hour or more of free time as Anna slips completely into Tubbieland.

We also purchased a Tubby cd-rom for Anna (actually, we were in CompUSA and her surgically repaired laser vision honed in on a Tubby game that only Clark Kent could have spotted from the other side of the store). She now begs for the "com-poo-tuh" and leads you upstairs to the computer room chanting "tuh-bahs!!" She's getting on to the mouse thing--does the clicking part o.k., but still wrestles with how to move the pointer.

We also have some good news on the premie book mentioned in our last HomeWatch update. The authors have found a publisher, and Anna's story is slated to appear as one of the entries when the book is published in a year or two (paper books take a lot longer to publish than information on the Internet). We'll keep you posted.

We continue to update Anna's Home Page, now entering it's third year as well. It includes current photos and weight updates. You can check it out at:

http://members.aol.com/crbright/annapge/annahm.htm

Hope this finds everyone well and that you and your family have a happy and prosperous 1999!

Love, Anna, Kelsey, and Craig

Anna's HomeWatch (Issued September 26, 2005)

O.k., So we've been a little remiss in writing...

Anna's doing great! She recently celebrated her 9th birthday, complete with a day spa at our house for her and 16 of her closest friends. Anna is in the third grade at her new school in upstate New York. We escaped the Washington, D.C. area in 2004 in search of a calmer lifestyle and a better family environment. The move also enabled Kelsey to stay home full time and devote more time to helping Anna with her school work and personal development. We are also closer to Kelsey's family, which allows Anna to spend more time with Grandma Mimi and all of Anna's cousins. Anna has adapted very well to the change, although she misses her old friends down south. She has lots of girlfriends in our new neighborhood. Her current leisure time activities include horseback riding, bicycling, skiing, soccer, playing on her swing set, and dressing up with her girlfriends in the neighborhood. She is also an avid collector of American Girl stuff, and has a Wizard of Oz bedroom complete with a wall mural painted by a local artist and neighbor. Anna did a good job of dealing with the loss of our pet cat Clyde earlier in the year when old age caught up with him. She now helps to take care of our other old cat, Pandora. Anna's big news is that we are adopting a little girl from China this coming January, and Anna can't wait to be a big sister! The whole family including Anna is making the trip to China to pick up her little sister. Whenever Anna meets someone new, she pulls one of her parents aside and says, "Do they know about the adoption?"

We have had our challenges over the years finding the right school placement for Anna. She has received a lot of evaluation, monitoring and support services since being identified as an at-risk child as a result of her prematurity. Her school administrators have placed Anna in a variety of settings, ranging from a regular classroom with minimal extra support to a full-time special education environment. She is currently in a regular classroom supplemented by occupational therapy to help with her fine motor skills, speech therapy, and special math support services on a regular basis. Anna also takes Strattera to help with her concentration, which can tend to wander at times, an issue that complicates efforts to evaluate her performance through standardized testing. She also regularly participates in the Kumon math tutoring program to help her keep up in this area. Although Math and related concepts challenge Anna, she is an avid reader who is able to read at her grade level. She is also an excellent speller and has a great memory for language. With the help of her last three au pairs, she became fluent in Spanish.

Above all, Anna is a great child with a wonderful disposition. Although still tiny for her age, she is strong and healthy and lives life to the fullest. She continues to wear glasses, as the eye she had operated on is somewhat weak, and has mild hearing loss as a result of scarring from numerous sets of tubes and ear infections. These issues do not impede her daily life in any noticeable way. Anna is now old enough to appreciate the significance of her early arrival, and understands how fortunate and grateful we all are to have her with us. She is also a very sensitive and caring person. At times she gets frustrated when she can't figure something out right away, but she is getting better at being patient and recognizing she may need to persevere more than other kids to figure things out or learn new skills. Her future remains bright, and we are very proud of her and enjoy watching and participating in her continued growth and progress.

Love, Anna, Kelsey, and Craig

Click below to: