Physical Therapy

Well we finally went in for Aaron's physical therapy exam. It took many phone calls to his pediatrician's office to get the prescription written to make the appointment (which she failed to give us at the office when she told us to go in for a PT exam). I was going to just give up and wait until his 12 month visit if he still wasn't crawling, but when I called at 11 months to make his 12 month appointment, all the peds were booked 2 months out, so he won't see his doctor until over a month past his birthday. If we didn't like his pediatrician so much and if the office wasn't so close to home, I might want to switch providers.

Anyway, the appointment was at 9am and Thom managed to meet us down there. The physical therapist was on time and friendly and asked us some questions before observing Aaron and then showing us some things we can do with him. The 3 areas of concern are the fact that he's not crawling, he's not sitting himself up once he is on his tummy, and he is not pulling to a stand.

When Aaron is on his tummy, his legs are bowed out like a frog. To help him learn to crawl, we are supposed to push his knees together and get him up on his hands and knees. She recommends sort of kneeling behind him and using our knees to hold his knees in together, so we have our hands free to help hold him back on his knees. Alternatively, we can put him over a leg or over a rolled up towel to help support him as he gets used to being up on his knees.

For sitting, we are supposed to help him get into a sitting position from his side. It involves a combination of getting him to reach for a toy as we move it in the direction he is going and assisting him up (he should use one arm to push himself up).

For standing, we are supposed to put a toy up on a surface, like the ottoman we have in his play area, and get him to try to pull up to get it. Since he is easily entertained by anything, we need to remove or hide his other toys so that the toy on the ottoman is really the only thing available to him. The problem with this is that he is entertained by the plastic plugs in the wall outlet, so it's nearly impossible to remove everything from the room of interest besides the toy on the ottoman.

But for the first week, we are supposed to focus on crawling and sitting. She wants us to come back for 4-6 weeks, with homework assignments in between, while she charts his progress. But first they need to clear it with the insurance company.

I don't reallly mind the physical therapy, or having to go back, but it does feel a little silly to be trying to teach him things that seem to come naturally to other babies. And maybe he would figure it all out on his own eventually. He is definitely making slow progress. He used to fall over reaching for toys and then roll to get them once he fell over. But now, when he realizes the toy is out of reach, he does an intentional, controlled fall, in order to get to it. He has also been starting to push himself backwards, which I've heard some babies do before they figure out how to go forward.

The one thing that does concern us is that he seems so unhappy when we try to get him onto his knees. We worry that he might be in pain, that maybe there is something physically wrong. But it's hard to say. Usually when we are trying to get him on his knees, he is determined to roll over to get something and we are thwarting him, so he gets upset.

We'll keep you posted!