He did it!!! Sam Michael Stibbe… CRAWLED!!!

Did I cry? Yep! And make him do it over and over again? Yep!

It happened out of nowhere. I opened the door to get our mail, and Jack turned on Elmo. I look over, and Little Man is doing a crawl to get to Elmo! Dropped the mail, and freaked out! Tried to record his very first ever crawl, but failed. So I backed Elmo up, and pushed play!

To say that this is a huge day is a huge understatement.

Adam and I have never told any of our friends, and only our immediate family the following. When Sam was sick, his neonatologist sat us down to have a “talk.” (we’d already had the “your kid probably won’t make it” talk, so we were really looking forward to this talk.)

Dr. N told us there was pretty much a 90% possibility that Sam would have Cerebral Palsy. If you looked at all the risk factors for CP, Sam pretty much had them all:

• Bacterial meningitis, a bacterial infection that causes inflammation in the membranes that surround the brain and spinal cord
• Viral encephalitis, a viral infection that causes inflammation of the brain
• Severe or untreated jaundice, a condition that appears as a yellowing of the skin and that occurs when certain byproducts of “used” blood cells aren’t filtered from the bloodstream
• Premature birth. A normal pregnancy lasts 40 weeks. Babies who are born fewer than 37 weeks into the pregnancy are at higher risk of cerebral palsy. The earlier the baby is born, the greater the risk of cerebral palsy.
• Low birth weight. Babies who weigh less than 5.5 pounds (2.5 kilograms) are at higher risk of developing cerebral palsy. This risk increases as birth weight falls.
• Breech births. Babies who have cerebral palsy are more likely to be in a feet-first position (breech presentation) at the beginning of labor rather than in a headfirst position.
• Multiple babies. The risk of cerebral palsy increases with the number of babies sharing the uterus. If one or more of the babies die, the chance that the survivors may have cerebral palsy increases.

At our NICU follow-up clinic, Sam was pretty much cleared of CP!! It was such a good feeling.

However, there has always been a lingering thought…. He doesn’t hit milestones when he is “supposed to,” and doesn’t seem to care.

Now that he is reaching for objects, scooting, sitting, and CRAWLING…. Adam and I are thrilled to say we are no longer worried about it either!!!

I can’t express how much I love these two. I am so proud to be their mom, and now that my hands are about to get a lot more full, I better go double-check all the baby-proofing we did a few months ago!

And Mr. Jack is no dummy either… Signing “More” and telling us how old he is!