Physical, Occupational, and Developmental Therapy Update

Hannah is definitely becoming her mother’s daughter.  She is becoming fiercely independent, stubborn, and wants to be in control of what she does.  Don’t know who that would sound like in our family!  LOL

Physical therapy (Wednesday):  She had a great PT day with Ms. Pam.  Even though she was visibly tired from the lack of a morning nap, she was a champ and had a great time.  We worked on balancing while sitting, balancing against the big peanut ball, getting our knees up into the crawling position, and quite a few other things.  By the time the session was over, Hannah was exhausted, but she was smiling.  The best news was that Pam did her one-month reevaluation of Hannah’s progress, and Hannah has hit 4 out of 9 long-term goals already!!!!  THAT is my girl 🙂

Occupational therapy (Thursday):  We talked about her absolute refusal to let us put our fingers into her mouth, let us feed her with a spoon, etc.  This is where the words “stubborn” and “control” were first thrown around.  Pat, her OT, thinks that this is a protective measure because she is scared to get stuff in her mouth that is not on her own terms.  She has no problem putting anything and everything in her mouth as long as SHE does it. 

Pat gave her a long gummy worm to hold and eat, and she was very curious at first, but then she was in heaven.  Since she has no teeth yet, she was unable to puncture the worm.  We also tried a lollipop, and she LOVED that UNTIL one of us tried holding it and letting us put it in her mouth.  She would keep trying to grab it out of our hands!  So Pat suggested why try opening her up to tastes in her mouth with solid foods that she can’t break off like gummi worms, lollipops, cold zucchini, cold carrots with ranch, thick pretzel rods with salt, etc. 

We are also to take a week off from trying to spoon feed her anything.  We are still going to feed her the baby food in each of her bottles with formula, but we will let her experiment and try putting the food into her mouth.

Developmental Therapy (Friday):  Hannah was just not in the mood.  Even though Hannah loves Jenny, her therapist, she just wasn’t having any more manipulation and work.  It could be that she was getting used to her orthotics and her feet were feeling weird or that she just wasn’t feeling like herself.  But, Jenny is scheduled to come back this Monday, so we will try again!