Developmental Assessment

The girls were seen yesterday by our amazing physical therapist at Phoenix Children's Hospital. This physical therapist specializes in preemies and multiples and she is great at what she does. We share many things in common like extended breastfeeding and an interest in getting into lactation consulting. I know I haven't talked much about my interest in becoming a lactation consultant on the blog, but now more than ever, I am really interested pursuing work in the lactation field. I will probably make another post about that sometime soon.

On to the girls development. The girls are doing well in many categories. At this age, the specialists like to see the babies start to close the gap between their adjusted and chronological age. They have an adjusted age of 10.5 months and a chronological age of 12.5 months. For every category besides gross motor skills, the girls scored right in between their adjusted and chronological age. With gross motor, we learned the girls will need some physical therapy. Both girls present with very low muscle tone. Both girls are extremely flexible (just like their gymnast mommy), but being flexible is not a good thing as they are learning to pull up on things and eventually walk. They are both not using their hip and butt muscles and they are compensating with locking out their legs and getting up on their tip toes.

Addison is not pulling up to standing. She will pull up to her knees but because she isn't using her but and hip muscles she can't get up without help. Once she is up, she wants to stand on her tip toes rather than using her whole flat foot for balance.

Riley is bound and determined and she will pull herself up with the use of her upper body strength. She is not engaging her hip and butt muscles and she also likes to lock our her legs and get up on her tip toes a bit.

Their scores put them at a 25% delay for their adjusted age. They would need to be 50% delayed to qualify for the early intervention program. In a way it is a good thing that they are not too far behind but we will need to get them into private physical therapy in our area to work on these skills.

The therapist feels that Addison is doing a bit better than Riley even though she isn't pulling up to standing yet. She thinks that with the therapy, Addison will be walking in the next 2-3 months but without therapy, the girls are a long way off from walking. Riley's personality is daring and determined and that is why she has been able to pull herself up but as the therapist said "the ways she is doing it is real ugly". Riley also doesn't engage her muscles in crawling and that is why she is still army crawling she she puts her legs in a frog position rather than straight. So Riley will need more help and it may take her awhile to learn to do it the right way rather than her way. That girl takes after her mommy in so many ways. LOL

We hope that with some help and therapy, the girls will join the rest of the walking world soon. Wish us luck!