Emma had her evaluation done by a speech therapist today.  She also did the evaluation for gross motor, I think.  It will still be a few weeks before the paperwork will be done, but the therapist assures me that Emma qualifies, so hopefully soon we will get her routine help with feeding and oral development.  Emma has taken such a long break from bottle-feeding that she doesn’t have much interest in it anymore.  That is my fault, but I didn’t want to task her system because of the respiratory difficulty.  I am going to more aggressively work with Emma on the bottle though.

The therapist did notice some things that were interesting.  She said that the muscles on one side of Emma’s face were tighter than the other side.  This would fit into what the geneticist explained to me about her side preference, which is getting better.  I think she can help to work out this tightness though.  She also noticed a small bump on the center of Emma’s upper lip.  It looks kind of like a blister.  Emma has always had it and I haven’t thought much of it, but the therapist pointed out how it has some characteristics of cleft palate.  She thinks Emma may have almost had a cleft palate and thinks she should be checked for a sub-mucous cleft palate.  This is a cleft that is covered by the tissue in the mouth, so it isn’t visible.  It can still affect her eating, swallowing, spitting up through nose, breathing, and hearing.  Sounds possible, doesn’t it?  I am making some phone calls to see who is qualified to check for that.

As far as Emma’s breathing goes, she is doing pretty well lately.  Yesterday she had some rough spots, but for the most part was great.  She has seemed over whatever colds she had and is happy and energetic.  I will try to get some more pictures up soon, but my camera is at the office right now.  I wrote down all of Emma’s spells that I could remember because of the questions that I keep getting asked by the doctors.  I realized that since the beginning of January, Emma has had a spell about once a week.  If they continue at that frequency, I think we need to keep pushing to do something about them.  If they become less frequent, I will not worry so much.