Physical Therapy Update

It’s been just over a month since we started Ivy’s physical therapy to help build up her low muscle tone in her legs and get her standing and walking. It has not been an easy road for sure, but we are making progress. She puts up less fuss when we do her exercises and is even starting to enjoy one of them. The therapist is very happy with her progress, and while we still have a long way to go towards her walking, I can tell she is getting stronger every day.

We have been doing the therapy once a week, and on a regular basis my mom and I do Ivy’s exercises with her. At first, she used to scream and cry when we did the weight bearing exercises with her but now, she only yells a little in the beginning and once we distract her (usually by singing the ABC’s) she will stand with my help for a few minutes. The one that she really enjoys involves me sitting her on my leg, while another person holds out their arms for her to pull herself up. She gets really proud of herself when she stands, and while her muscle tone is not strong enough to hold her up there, she is trying bless her. She has even started to reach up to things and try and pull herself up. The other day at therapy she even stood on her own for a few seconds. This is all good progress obviously. Every week the therapist says he sees an improvement and tells me I am doing all the right things to help her.

The key too getting her stronger lies not only in the daily exercises but also in incorporating them into things we do every day. When we are at the playground I lean her against the climbing structures and help her stand. We go up and down steps (and slides of course b/c they are fun!) and practice weight bearing while she holds onto various bars of the jungle gym.

While I know we still have a lot of work ahead of us, I am very proud of my little girl, and myself for all the hard work we’ve done. I also think that all of these exercises have made her want to try and walk, which was obviously lacking before. Ivy is a very strong headed little girl and I think all the therapy in the world wouldn’t do the trick, she had to get interested in walking. So we will keep up the hard work until she is ready to stand. And, at the end of the day, while carrying her around everywhere and relying on the stroller all the time are a major pain in the ass, there are so many worse things I could be having to deal with. I am grateful for her health and well being and don’t really see this developmental delay as an issue.

Wordless: A Day At The Beach

Wordless: Nap On the Go, Then One Happy Girl

Urban vs. Suburban: Round One – Driving

It’s no secret anymore that for the past 5 weeks I have been living with my parents in Jersey. While it’s not the time or the place to get into why I am living here with Ivy, I felt the need to blog about something other than Ivy’s Physical therapy which let’s face it is getting bor-ring. (Though she continues to make improvements so yay!)

So I just wanted to share a few observations I have made about suburban life over these past few weeks. Now, mind you I grew up in the suburbs but moved out at 19, so there’s a lot in my adult life to get used to in regard to living here.

The first is the driving. Oh holy hell, the driving. I used to have driver guilt in Brooklyn. Like when I’d take the car to the grocery store or to go pick up Ivy I always felt like a fool for wasting gas. But here I drive freaking everywhere. It’s so annoying. Like, the grocery store that is close by. It might be a reasonable walk except that there is a highway and no adequate sidewalks to get me there. It kills me because it’s literally like a 3 minute drive and I am there all the time. I should interject here to say that in Brooklyn I totally drove to the middle of nowhere on the waterfront fancy grocery store to do a big weekly shop, but – BUT! if I needed milk I could always go around the corner or walk 3 blocks to get some. Now it requires a drive. There are several places I can walk to, like the post office or the drugstore but really how often am I going to the post office?!?

The other driving thing that kills me here is the school children and their bus stop. There is a bus stop to the local elementary school at the top of the road here. I would like to point out here that this school is closer to my house than the grocery store and when I was young I used to walk there. Ahem. But the lazy kids getting the bus to school is not really the point here. The thing that annoys the living crap outta me is this: parents that live like 1 block away from the bus stop drive their freaking children one block to the bus stop then drive back home after dropping them off. I see that some of the kids are young, and sometimes it’s raining but for fucks sake people, really?!?! Walk your damn kid one block to the bus.

Luckily there are several parks and a nice walking trail close by that I can my walking fix in. My friend actually keeps making fun of me because he says I walk to fast and look suspicious like I just stole the kid in the stroller I’m pushing way too fast. I’m working on my suburban stride but damn it’s hard. As a person who used to pretty much walk to get everywhere I am used to walking with a purpose not just strolling along enjoying the day. I really need to do more of that.

Week One of Physical Therapy

So today was Ivy’s second session of Physical therapy. Last week, the therapist came and showed us several exercises to do with her that would help her build her muscle tone and help her get used to bearing weight on her little legs and feet. Ivy screamed, and cried, and yelled, and cried some more, but ultimately he was able to show me a few different exercises to do with her.

All week my mother and I have been faithfully doing these exercises with her. She’s hilarious because at first she gets so excited to see the exercise ball and to sit on it, until she realizes we are actually doing one of her exercises (which by the way basically involves sitting her on the ball and jiggling her around so she can get used to moving her torso in that way and also so she starts to get more comfortable ‘being up high’). There are also several other weight bearing exercises, one which involves standing her up against a wall and holding her shins so that she doesn’t lock her knees (and lead to more hyper extension), and the other which involves sitting her on your leg and a second person holding out their hands for her, so that she can try to pull herself up to standing. Once she pulls up (and she’s getting really good at it!) then you have to hold her shins to prevent the locking of the knees. Actually the other day while we were doing this exercise after she successfully pulled herself up she started laughing. I told the PT about this and he says that is a good sign.

He came today for the second week of actually doing exercises with her and said he can already see a difference in her. He says we are doing everything right and well we are still in for a lot of work, things are progressing nicely. He actually also told me that Ivy is not the screamiest toddlers he’s ever dealt with, and says that as she gets over the frustration of not being able to stand on her own, she will scream less. He said, she’s only screaming because she’s frustrated and this is her way of trying to make us stop.

But overall it has been challenging trying to tackle this while there is so much else going on in my life. So it was really nice to have the therapist tell me today that I am doing everything right (with the help of my mother mind you). So hopefully in a few months time I will be yearning for the days before Ivy started walking. And something tells me this one is going to go right from standing to running. Send help now.

Mobility: Starting Physical Therapy

After months of paperwork and meeting and faxed prescriptions from Ivy’s pediatrician, we are finally starting her physical therapy on Monday. On Wednesday the therapist came over to meet Ivy, and to get a basic sense of my concerns and her over all situation. It’s really hard because due to some bullshit I am going through in my life, I am no longer living in Brooklyn at the moment, so I have to drive up from Jersey every week for this. But we met him on Wednesday and he was really nice.

I guess since it’s his job he totally knows how to handle kids Ivy’s age, and he would start playing with her toys until she got interested in what he was doing. He is going to use an exercise ball with her in the therapy so they played with that too so she got used to it. He didn’t really try and exercises with her since this visit was just for her to get comfortable with him. He did stand her up once to see what was going on, and he says she’s has seriously underdeveloped muscle tone in her feet legs and butt, and that her knees are hyper extended, but not too bad. So the underdeveloped muscle tone is why she won’t pull up to stand. he says the knee hyper extension is caused by us standing her up and her putting pressure on her joints. He is certain all of this can be corrected with therapy, but we are in for a long road ahead. He showed me a new exercise to do with her, that will not put pressure on her knees and will help her get used to the squatting position. We have tried this a few times without much success, but I will be patient and persistent and do everything he says we need to do. He asked some questions about her other gross motor skills and language skills and based on my answers was sure that this isn’t due to some larger problem, so that put me at ease. So for now, we just keep moving forward and doing what we have to to help her.

Favorite Lullaby

Ivy goes to sleep most nights listening to either Bob Marley or some sort of mellow reggae mix. For a while when she slept at my mom’s house she would go to sleep listening to the Direct TV radio station called ‘Kingston’.

One of my absolute favorites to sing to her is ‘Mellow Mood’ by Bob Marley. I would suggest seeking out the old school version, from when he still had short dreads, this one is a little slow. Still, the words capture the essence of why it’s such a good night – night song.

When Your Words Come Back to Haunt You

I spent a lot of the time during Ivy’s early eating adventures bragging about what a good eater she was. She’s not picky at all! She’ll eat anything. Green beans? Peas? Bring it on! My little girl loves her veggies!!

Well, it seems that now all that bragging is coming back to bite me in the ass. Because these days? Ivy refuses to eat anything green that isn’t avocado. Her beloved peas? Forget about it. Even if I try to ‘sneak’ them in with her absolute favorite food of all time, pasta with marinara, she will eat around them. If she does miss one and it ends up in her mouth? Right out. There was a time when she was really fond of broccoli as well. Now? Even when I mash it into the tiniest of particles and try to ‘hide’ it in something else, she refuses it. She will, occasionally eat green beans but they have to be chopped up into tiny little pieces or else, no dice.

A hilarious thing happened last week. In the morning, Jon and I had a random conversation about how Ivy never got into throwing her food or food bowls. That night, I made her some chicken sweet potato and green beans, a dinner that in the past would have been eaten with enthusiasm. But oh no, not these days. She was kind of picking at it, mixing the food around and eating bits of chicken here and there. I went into the kitchen for a minute, and got distracted by a phone call. When I came back in to the living room (which doubles as our dining room) I saw that the entire contents of Ivy’s dinner had been thrown around. Like all over the damn living room. It was hard not to laugh, I actually had to go into the hallway to laugh for a minute. I mean come on we JUST SAID that morning she never threw food and here she had emptied to contents of her dinner bowl all over the floor. But I composed myself and gave her a stern talking to about not throwing food. I asked her if she wanted anything else to eat and she said no, and that was that. We have not had a food throwing incident since.

That particular incident aside, she is still a pretty good eater and does not shy away from really flavorful stuff like curry but it’s just the green that she is growing to dislike. She is also still willing to try out new things which is good. This could have less to do with her palate and more to do with those new toddler personality traits she seems to be possessing. You know the ones that think normal everyday activities like hair brushing and diaper changes are THE WORST EV-ER and must be accompanied by screaming, screeching, crying and occasionally trying to headbutt me and/ or thrash herself right off the changing table. I really hope she outgrows this phase sooner rather than later, but something tells me that the toddler years are going to be a challenge.

Wordless: We Stand With Planned Parenthood

From Saturday’s Rally for Womens Health in Manhattan:

Mobility Part 6: Frustration Sets In

Since my last post very little has happened on the walking/standing/early intervention front. We had the second evaluation – the one where they evaluate her speaking & social skills. That one felt more grilling than the last; it was like 10,000 questions. Then Ivy had a bunch of ‘tasks’ to complete like putting a small object into a bigger one, shape sorting and pointing to various pictures when asked “Where’s the cat?” or “Where’s your eye?”. It felt kind of like the SAT’s for my child. The therapist was impressed when Ivy got to the shape sorter and started saying “Star” and “Circle” and was able to identify colors. I guess all this kind of stuff is advanced. To me the whole thing was like a real life test of those babycenter milestones. It was kind of annoying, especially when I read the report after. But I’ll get to that in the moment.

We explained that the physical therapist was going to recommend therapy for Ivy and the woman said she would fill out her report and we would hear from our coordinator about setting up a meeting to discuss our therapy program. This was like a month ago. After a few weeks we called the coordinator who said we should be recieving the reports soon and she would be in touch to schedule a meeting. We finally got the letter and reports which seemed really conflicting. Like, the letter said Ivy does NOT qualify for the early intervention program but when I read both therapists reports they said they were going to recommend therapy. So I called for some clarification last week and was told someone would contact me Tuesday. And they did, but I missed the call and when I called back? Voicemail. So I left a message and still haven’t heard back.

In the meantime, Ivy’s still not making any effort to stand or walk. We do the exercise the PT showed us, and she’s getting better at it – and by better I mean less crying when we do it- but she’s still not really standing on her own. Which is really frustrating to me because it means still lugging her and the stroller up and down the steps and all over the place. I’m still trying really hard not to stress but it’s at the point where I’m starting to freak out a little on the inside and blame myself for something I’ve obviously done wrong. And I guess I shouldn’t expect much from early intervention – I mean it is a state run program and I’m sure there are plenty of children that need the services beyond my little girl who won’t walk. But it would at least be nice if they would explain to me what our next steps would be. Like, say seeking out private PT services that (hopefully) our insurance would cover. But this whole not knowing what step is next is killing me.