Physical Therapy Assessment

Yesterday was......sad. I'll try to be honest about our journey and while I'm typically the eternal optimist, every now and then we have a day where reality kinda hits us. Taylor's physical therapist Sarah came over yesterday morning and did the physical therapy assessment on her. Unfortunately Taylor was tired for her appointment and literally about fell asleep on the floor toward the end of the appointment. This is another reason we need to conquer sleep for her - her schedule is too unpredicatable right now and we need her fresh for her work-outs.

Anyway, Taylor did not score well. While this shouldn't have been a surprise, it's still shocking to me to see that she scored a 1 out of a scale of 10 for motor skills (with a 10 score being your average nine month old). This was another way of marking her at the 3 month old developmental age for motor skills (similar to our first assessment), but for some reason it sounded worse to me. I already blew my goal of not crying in front of the physical therapist on the first meeting. Sarah had a UW intern with her and I'm sure she thought I was a basket case. Oh well....I'll keep trying.

Sarah ran her through many tests and her lack of arm strength again brought her score down. We're going to work with Taylor on holding onto a toy with both hands at the same time, playing with her feet (her hands haven't met them yet), and rolling over to start. Yesterday was the assessment vs. a physical therapy session, which will start next Tuesday. We'll both learn the exercises so we can help her every day.

Next week will be busy with her first PT session, endocrinology and opthamology appointments, and her family plan meeting with the Boyer Clinic. This meeting will be with multiple specialists from the Boyer Clinic and is designed to make sure we have agreed goals for Taylor's development. We're not really sure how we can help with this - if it were up to us, Taylor would be sitting tomorrow and walking at age 1. But, we're going to need help understanding what is realistic. The sequence of the meetings is determined by the state since the program receives state funding, so we're still trying to figure out how we get things moving by doing everything they suggest.

I'm feeling better this morning after our first good night's sleep in weeks. We letTaylor cry last night when she woke up at 9:30pm and she met Lauren's household record for longest cry. At least we know she is determined and has stamina. It was hard, but we know that she really needs to get back on track. She made a peep at 4am, but put herself back to sleep and then slept until 6:45am. Hallelujah! And then, I think Jake woke her up when he dropped a pile of pennies down our hardwood stairs. We're so proud of her and hope we've turned a corner on sleeping.

As I listened to her cry last night, I organized a backlog of photos into photo albums and was reminded of how many wonderful memories we've had as a family. We're looking forward to many wonderful times ahead.