preemie schmeemie

When Graham was born in Massachusetts, the hospital we were at (mad props to South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, MA! Woot woot!) asked if we wanted to start getting in contact with Early Intervention services there, since Graham was premature. (Early Intervention is a free, state-run program that evaluates kids and sends out services if they have significant delay in any areas like language, fine/gross motor development, social skills, and so on. While Graham luckily doesn't need any services (whoops! spoiler!), Early Intervention is an amazing program that has helped lots of kids I know, both "officially" developmentally delayed kids and "normal" kids who were just a little behind in one aspect or another. And did I mention it is free?)

Anyway, we decided to hold off and get in touch with the coordinator in Rochester. So we did that when we got back to NY, and they sent us a questionnaire to fill out when he was (corrected age) 4 months old. I filled it out a few weeks ago, and G-man was all solid in terms of motor skills and whatnot. But Joe and I had some concerns about his social interaction. He was really shutting down in strange situations (and it's too early for stranger anxiety), not making a lot of eye contact, and not interacting with us/himself in the mirror.

Then we went home for a week. And my goodness, it must have just been the attention lavished on this boy, because some switch got flipped. He talks, he smiles, he screams with joy. (Seriously. He developed this new scream of happiness that will pierce your skull.) So when the evaluation team came out yesterday, I think they thought I was a bit nuts.

Regardless, they thought Graham was tremendous, for 4 months or for 6 months. There are some aspects where he is still working on catching up, some in which he is totally caught up, and in fact, they though his social and language skills were even above average for 6 months. I just can't believe, sometimes, how lucky we are. There were babies at SSH that were even older than G gestationally, and had a lot more problems. And while I am absolutely a biased, proud parent that thinks her child is perfect and advanced and gifted beyond all compare, I really do just feel grateful. As hard as it was, this all could have been so much harder. We are an extremely lucky little family.