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.