As it seems with many things in our life, Sydney's crawling has been quite the adventure. I know it seems late for me to say she is a crawler, and that's because it is. When we went for Sydney's 12 month well check, one of my main questions/concerns for the pediatrician was should we be worried that Sydney was not crawling? The short answer was yes. Now the why is more complicated, but long story short, the cause of the late crawling is a combination of her not being able to use her hands/arms for a month following surgery as well as the fact that she is on the small side which can sometimes cause a delay. Her pediatrician referred her for an evaluation to determine if she qualified for physical therapy.
Well, this referral turned into a much bigger deal than I anticipated. We were assigned a service coordinator who came for a home visit. The service coordinator then scheduled an evaluation time. The evaluation consisted of the three of us, plus the service coordinator, a social worker, and a physical therapist...overwhelming to say the least. It was hard enough knowing that Sydney is delayed physically, add on top of that the stress of having three strangers come to the house and expect her to "perform", well it gave me a few gray hairs I'm sure.
On the day of the evaluation, we were told Sydney would be tested in five areas: gross motor skills, fine motor skills, expressive language (how she communicates), receptive language (how she receives and understands language), and problem solving skills (really...on a 13 month old??). My main area of concern of course was the lack of crawling as well as the fact she was unable to get herself from a laying down position to a sitting position and vice versa. I was also interested to see how she would perform in the fine motor category, especially since I'm not sure what a 13 month old is supposed to be able to do fine motor wise and to see if her syndactyly has hindered her in this area at all. Well, they of course evaluated those areas last. I suppose this is because they wanted her at her "peak" for the more academic skills. The evaluation lasted about an hour or so. I must say she sat down in front of the three strangers and performed to her little heart's content. It was as if she were putting on a show for them. She spoke about every word she knew and imitated just about every animal sound she knew as well. She was even able to do a few things I didn't know she could. For example, one of the evaluators asked her to "give Mommy the _____." The tricky part was I couldn't hold out my hand as a clue that she was to give it to me. She turned right around and handed me the object. There were also some tasks she was not able to complete, such as a simple puzzle, but this did not really surprise me. They warned us before beginning the assessment that they would be asking her to do some tasks she would not be able to complete but not to worry. They had to follow the complete test and some tasks are above her developmental stage (ie puzzles).
After finishing the evaluation, Sydney went down for a nap and we discussed the results. They basically compared Sydney with other 13 month olds and graded (for lack of a better term) her on a bell curve. They divided the bell curve into the following categories: above average, average, slightly delayed, and significantly delayed. When going over the results, the evaluators started with Sydney's strengths. She tested above average in both expressive and receptive language (insert proud mama comments here) and average in both problem solving and fine motor. Unfortunately she tested significantly delayed in gross motor. Now, in the moment I was ok with this result. I have discovered since having Sydney that I am the type of person who goes with the flow in the moment and has to process things after the fact. So while discussing the results, I held myself together. Following the evaluation, I found myself feeling sad, frustrated, and guilty (why I'm not sure, comes with motherhood territory I guess). I think every mother's hope is that her child is normal developmentally and it's hard when that doesn't happen. Believe me, I know this is not a huge ordeal in the long-run, but right now it's hard to see my baby struggle. So the results mean that Sydney qualifies for physical therapy.
Fast forward about a month and a half and....we have a CRAWLER!!! Sydney has had four physical therapy sessions and she make leaps and bounds worth of progress each time. Her therapist comes to the house and basically plays with her for an hour but manipulates the play into opportunities for her to practice crawling, pulling up, sitting down, and even walking behind a rolling toy. She is great about leaving us with assignments to work on throughout the week until her next session. Each time I can see improvement. In fact, yesterday she crawled up the STAIRS. I mean, to go from not crawling (actually, she did an odd crawl when she basically pushed herself with her legs using her arms a little bit but kept her head on the floor...it was a bit awkward) to being pretty much fully mobile in four weeks is pretty darn amazing.
The therapist guessed Sydney would be crawling 'normally' by Thanksgiving, but Sydney has blown that prediction out of the water. I can already see Sydney being a determined child, not letting anyone tell her she can't. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised to be writing another post soon saying she is walking! Until then, here is a link to a video of our crawler from a few weeks ago. She is much quicker now!
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