Relief

A bit delayed but here are the doctor's answers to Matthew's three issues.

1. Matthew's sleep patterns are pretty normal for a two year old since he usually gets between 7 and 10 hours of sleep a day the doctor isn't worried. He says because Matthew has been doing this wake up in the middle of the night thing for so long it's now what he considers normal. His suggestion is to move Matthew's bedtime to 9 p.m. instead of 7 p.m. to hopefully have him so exhausted he'll sleep through the night or at least sleep through the times I want to be asleep. He called it "sleep starving".

At least he didn't prescribe Benadryl, chamomile tea, Ovaltine, or sleeping pills.

2. This doctor, too, has decided Matthew's leg pains are growing pains. The doctor asked if there were other symptoms like swelling, fever, weight loss, etc. I answered no to everything on his list so he's determined it's growing pains and the only thing to do is massage them with Bengay. And if the pain gets too bad to give him Tylenol.

3. The doctor says because Matthew listens and can follow two and three step instructions, for example, go over there, get the green shoes and bring them to me, he, the doctor, is not worried about the lack of speech. He says language is more than just talking. He thinks the talking will come eventually. He also thought Matthew might be autistic but once he examined him he ruled that out completely because Matthew engaged with him well and had good eye contact and did what the doctor asked easily, i.e. lay down, open your mouth, etc. (I was particularly impressed with this diagnosis because I hadn't even mentioned the word autism and in the past with some of the other doctors if I didn't question something specifically it wouldn't be brought up at all.)

The doctor does want Matthew to have a hearing test because he says maybe he's not hearing all the levels of sound which is why he's not repeating them. If I say to Matthew "say moo like the cow" he repeats boo. However, there are NO doctors here who can administer a hearing test so we will have to continue to wait until I can get him a passport so I can take him out of the country.

There is an outside chance, however, that a doctor is coming here in September/October/November, somewhere around there, to do hearing tests on infants. The doctor says if I still haven't gotten Matthew's papers by then he'll try and get Matthew on the list to be seen by this other doctor.

As an added bonus of this pretty awesome doctor visit, the doctor also charted Matthew's weight, height and head size and Matthew is sitting firmly on the 50% line for all three. According to the doctor, I am doing something right because Matthew is so perfectly healthy. Yeah for me! And even bigger yeah for Matthew!

All in all, I am pretty relieved!

Cheers :-)
- Rainforest Mommy