Another Developmental Review!

Bennett's developmental nurse came to visit us this morning. She evaluated him along the standards for an 8 month old. His actual age is 11.5 months and his adjusted age is 9 months old. He is meeting most developmental milestones for an 8 month old. However, he still shows signs of weak upper body strength and now weak abdominal strength. The nurse was not all that concerned about it at this time, however, because he was in the hospital for nearly 2 weeks without the ability to practice and work on strengthening. So, the plan is to wait to see if he "catches" up a little more by his next appointment. If not, then he will begin receiving regular in-home physical therapy. She gave us a bunch of new exercises to do with him at home to see if we can help him make progress.

He is also showing signs of a verbal delay. But again, this isn't terribly surprising or worrisome since he was on oxygen for nearly 2 weeks in March, and respiratory problems are notorious for interfering with speech development. Because of his respiratory history, she said she recommends we wait until at least August before moving forward with speech therapy, as it can sometimes "stress" a baby out, assuming he doesn't have backward progression. I feel pretty confident though that pretty soon his speech development will take off and it won't even be a concern at all. He is making a few consonant sounds like "da" and "ba" but doesn't really do the rolling "da da da da" sounds.

We also discussed his growth expectations for the next year. She said that he should be slowly creeping up toward a firm position on the growth chart over the next few months. She wholly concurrs with our Pediatrician's recommendation that we keep him on breastmilk and formula until at least 18 months, and perhaps longer depending on what his growth does.

I myself and pretty pleased with his developmental progression in the past two months and don't feel worried at all about any of this stuff. Bennett's had a rough year - all things considered, he's doing pretty stellar!