9 Months Old!

August 13, 2010

Natalie is 9 months old today, and it is Friday the 13th, which will always be her special day.

I planned to update this blog weekly, on a recurring schedule, in order to force myself to write out my thoughts, feelings, concerns, and ideas about the situations that we are facing with our daughter. Unfortunately, I am a little numb today. I don’t feel anything new, or worth detailing. I have few concerns, and absolutely no ideas. So I will just provide a brief update this week.

Natalie went to her first Physical Therapy session yesterday with Jakki. They went to the Kaiser Permanente facility in Sacramento, and the session went ok, I think. Jakki is not too thrilled with the therapist, everyone seems to have an opinion on her condition and unfortunately that gets in the way of progress and frankly is starting to really get on Jakki’s nerves. The therapist is no exception. The therapist seems to think that Natalie’s physical condition isn’t about a growth condition as much as it is about her mental state of mind. She is smart. She has her parents trained. Why work on crawling and reaching when mommy will give me what I need sometime soon anyway? She is patient, and she doesn’t need much to occupy her time. She doesn’t need to be independent yet and she knows it. At least, that’s what the therapist thinks. I can see it either way, I guess.

The therapist provided Jakki with some training and exercises for Natalie. It seems that she has an underdeveloped core, and requires some muscle exercises to help with her balance and movement. Two weeks of home exercises and then they meet again.

On the positive side, Natalie has started to take the initiative to do complete push-ups. Before now, she was a fish out of water, flopping around on her belly and back, with arms and legs flailing. She was rolling on the floor to get around, and she can spin herself so that she can roll in any direction. Now she is starting to actually lift her stomach off the ground, and she has found her knees help with that. I have a feeling that she will transition from rolling to crawling in a couple of weeks, but time will tell.

~ Nathan