Time for an update, I think!
Eating - Andrew's still being spoonfed, showing no signs of either grabbing the spoon himself or hand-feeding any other food. We are now up to three solid meals a day, he's on a variety of stage 2 & 3 meals at lunchtime as he continues to be relatively choosy about flavours. He still has 3 bottles of milk a day too. He has no interest at all in what we are eating, and if you hand him food, he drops it and then mouths a toy.
Development - significant developments this month include putting one toy inside another to increase the noise when he then hits the outer toy; and bringing a ball or toy train to us to roll across the floor so that he can chase it. This latter action is really good progress, as it means he is beginning to interact with us and understand that he can get our help/cooperation with things.
Speech - nothing, nada, zilch. Very tuneful with the vocalising and we get an occasional 'b' sound but nothing more. Now that his behaviour is changing, it's probably time to start again with trying to teach him signs.
Hearing - this has been the biggest change. As his behaviour has become more focused, last week he finally started to understand what was needed in the audiometry tests. He remains completely disinterested in the hidden/revealed puppets; but he loves the rotating and flashing amber light (think 'top of AA van'). He's associated hearing a sound in the test with someone switching on the light briefly - he hears the sound, turns his head, waits a second, and the light is activated as reward. Last week we got some test results from his left ear, today we got results from his right. And he does have hearing!!! He's got a mild to moderate loss in the lower frequencies, and a severe to profound loss in the higher frequencies. We return again next week to fill in the gaps on the audiogram (chart), and then they will tune his hearing aids to augment the higher frequencies more than the lower ones. We hope that once his aids are better tuned to his needs, that he'll start learning to listen to things around him and tuning into the world.
Size - I wish he'd put on some weight around his middle! He's growing consistently, still below 0.4th percentile. But he's such a skinny minny, if we get trousers of the correct length, they fall down from his middle! Roll on summer and wearing shorts.
Pre-School - our pre-schools advisor has said that she doesn't think he'd cope with mainstream pre-school from September, even with large amounts of support (though this was said before his recent improvements in development, and getting better hearing aids could also assist!) Andrew is 'on the list for discussion' to try and get him an assessment placement at a Special Needs nursery instead. We wait to hear about this, being in a social setting would definitely encourage him. I can't believe that a year ago I was worried about him going to nursery and now I'm keen for him to do so, I can see how it'd benefit him.
Think that's enough for now