For babies that have a NICU stay, there are follow-up assessments to ensure that everything is going well and if there are signs of issues that would not have been seen at the time of their stay, especially developmental / cognitive issues, those can be monitored or addressed. We haven't really seen anything that suggested a concern, but you never know.  

Mairin had her 1 year NICU follow-up yesterday. It wasn't entirely clear what all would happen at this visit. She had two appointments. The first is the neurological / psychological assessment which is intended to get a picture of how well she is doing developmentally. The assessor basically tells the child to do something (there are toys to put in cups, find the toy under the cup, puzzles, building towers, drawing when instructed, fine-motor / gross-motor activities). This took a bit over an hour. There were times where I'm pretty sure by Mairin's facial expression, that she could care less about showing you where the door is or say "woof." She did do most of the activities though, which was pretty cool to watch, including building a tower, finding the block most of the time under the cup, attempting puzzles, and putting pegs into holes.

One activity, she was asked to put the cheerio into the jar. Let's be honest, if I had been sitting for an hour and was ready for a snack, I would totally just eat it (which she did after shaking her head no to the instructions). Also, when it was time to give back the blue duck, she shook her head no (she did eventually give it back).

The second appointment was more physical-well being related (growing as expected). It was hilarious because the nurse didn't pay attention to the detail and said wow, she's over the 100% for height! When really, the other nurse that did the measurement, made an error and didn't have Mairin's head all the way to the starting mark. In general though, she is physically healthy and well on track for her age.

The pediatric psychologist reviewed the results with us and we're thankful to say there are no red-flags developmentally or physically. She displayed behaviors that were "high average" according to the scales as well as "average." Which is exactly what you hope for. We are thankful and blessed that so far everything is suggesting everything that happened at birth did not negatively impact her over the long term. She will go back at 26 months for another assessment, and up until kindergarten to make sure she is continuing to progress, which based on what we've seen, those appointments should be a piece of cake.