Update to "Not sitting at 8/9 mos adjusted"

wishesforfish

Hi everyone. I don't post here often, although I do lurk on SN and Preemies. And sometimes on Multiples

A bit back I posted that my son wasn't sitting unassisted at 8/9 mos adjusted and that worried the heck outta me because all the fears of CP etc were constantly running through my head. In any case my son went on to tripod sit and eventually sit unassisted at 1 year adjusted (!)

The good news is that he crawled and pulled up before that..at about 10 or 11 mos adjusted. And now at 15.5 mos adjusted he took his first independent steps. He's very wobbly and constantly reaches for furniture or adults for support, but he's making progress. PT is quite pleased that he is cruising well. He does have terrible weight shifting, so we are working on that and the treatment goal is to have him walking well independently at 20 months adjusted.

I still don't know why his trunk muscles were so behind the rest of him. Perhaps his long stay in the hospital (9.5 mos) or maybe a touch of CP. Time will tell. Right now he's alive, walking and talking (also delayed..2 months behind) and the rest is just gravy.

 

st.augbride

Our son has low tone in the trunk. He is almost 9 months and 7.5 adjusted and can just as of two weeks ago tripod sit, though is wobbly. He always tries to lift his arms up and can hold it for a few seconds, but again, he is very wobbly. He didn't really have good head control until recently and just started rolling back to belly about a month ago. Anyhow, having low tone in just the trunk and upper body is pretty common. Did you ever get that as a diagnosis?

wishesforfish

Hi. We never did get a "low tone" diagnosis. Maybe he does have low tone. What we saw was a lag in his trunk strength vs the rest of his body, but it seems to be much better now. We mentioned his trunk floppiness to PT and OT at the time and were taught exercises to help -

 1. With baby in a sitting position, placing toys to the side and out of reach to encourage the baby to reach out sideways and downwards/upwards.

2. doing the same thing when he was sitting on a low stool,

3. holding baby by his hips while he sits on a stool;

4. encouraging play with both hands by having him sit at a low table and stool. (or stool and appropriately sized box! No need for expensive baby furniture really. Our stool was $4 from Ikea)

As you can see the stool sitting was a big thing with our therapists and it did help my son. He liked being able to sit like that and he could play with both hands as opposed to just being on his tummy on the floor.

We did not get any "tone" diagnosis and I feel that PT/OT were afraid to mention the CP label to us. My son showed gradual improvement and I think around 10/11 months we started to focus more on encouraging crawling/pulling up. Eventually he sat well at 1 year adjusted.