Working on movement

This morning, we met with an occupational therapist to learn about taking part in Brenna's therapy and working with her on her range of movement.

The OTs say that she has pretty good range of movement, especially considering that her tight, thick skin really restricted her movement for the first nine months of her life. Her hamstrings are a little tight, and we also want to focus on her ankles/feet and hands. The thick skin on her feet and hands still hasn't come off, but she is starting to move her fingers and toes a lot more, so hopefully she'll pick up more movement in those areas soon.

Looking back at my pregnancy, the movement was the only thing that I would have considered "abnormal." When I was pregnant with Connor, he was a mover and shaker. I could see him roll across my entire belly as he flipped around, and he would kick like crazy right up until he was born.

With Brenna, however, the movements were more like flutters than big kicks. As my pregnancy progressed, I kept telling Evan "she's moving, but it's so much more subtle than with Connor." We even did a non-stress test the week before she was born because I expressed my concern over her movements to my doctor.

Now knowing what we do about her skin condition, we realize that she was barely moving because physically, she couldn't.

With Brenna's "original" skin now having mostly fallen off, she is finally getting to move and stretch...and she can be a fiesty little thing! We are so glad that she isn't as restricted as she once was, and we hope to increase her mobility even more with the little stretches that the occupational therapist is teaching us to do with her.

She'll be running around in no time :)