Developmental Review

Bennett had a visit from his Developmental nurse this morning for his monthly developmental review. He is doing really well! She reviewed him on the standards for a 6 month old because he is only 7 months adjusted and it only goes in 2 month increments, so the next set of standards is 8 months. He is hitting 90% of the 6-month standards, and the ones he isn't hitting are the "high end" markers, so its not worrisome.

She did express some concern about his low muscle tone in his upper body. He's had this forever, but she said we're going to start seeing it interfering a lot more with his developmental milestones from now on. She told us to make sure he gets a LOT of floor time to play, Army crawl, push him on his hands, etc. She also wants us to make him reach up for us to be picked up, continue doing his arm exercises that we've been doing for the tightness in his arms, and play lots of "So Big" with him. She also told us to NOT use the Jumperoo with him anymore and to greatly limit the amount of time we allow him to spend in the exersaucer as this inhibits his ability to work on upper body strength, while allowing him to overcompenstate with lower body. It makes sense. He just loves his exersaucer and Jumperoo though! She said that if we don't start seeing some improvement in the next few weeks, that she will have the physical therapist come to start working with him.

The next big milestone he needs to work on is pulling himself up to standing. She said until his upper body strength is increased, he won't be able to do this.

The other slightly concerning issue is verbal skills. He will occassional use consonant sounds like "ba" or "ga" but not very frequently. She would like to see more of this and would like to see him start the "ba ba ba" rambling more. She said that we'll leave this as a watch and see item for now since he has had a lot of respiratory issues, it tends to take a little longer. She told us we should repeat any sounds he makes to encourage him to continue and to babble to him in consonant sounds to try and get him to mimic.

All-in-all he's doing really well! Considering all the challenges he had the first 6 months, she is really pleased at how he is doing. None of these issues are really very concerning, and they are really classical preemie issues. Nonetheless, we do want to stay on top of it and help him close the gap in his adjusted and actual age sooner rather than later.

And now for a token picture of Mr. Beautiful Eyes to reward you for reading my rambling thoughts!

I hope you all have a very blessed week!