failed developmental eval

komurphy

Hi all,

I haven't posted in a long while but I have a question for the group. 

My twins are currently 18 months old former 27 week preemies.  This week we went in for their routine 18 month evaluation with their developmental pediatrician.   At our 6 and 12 month evals our son has always shown delays but our daughter has always passed. She's always been our rock star.

This time around our son, who has been in PT and OT for about a year now, passed the eval and our daughter did not.  Our developmental pediatrician used the Denver Test and the MCHAT for an Autism Screening.  She told us that our daughter didn't pass the social/ behavioral and the speech portion of the Denver Test and had 4 or 5 bad responses on the MCHAT. She gave us a referral for an OT and Speech evaluation, a new hearing test and is going to call us with a Developmental Physiologist (?) referral after she talks with a colleague.  To make matters worse, she also told us that DD has pretty severe in-toeing and stiff ankles and needs PT. Blahh.

I'm really trying to stay away from Dr Google since it has been my experience that it only scares the hell out of me (I made the mistake of Googling NEC after she was diagnosed with it in the NICU).  But I'd like to hear other moms experiences.  Is their anyone on this board with any experience w/ bad developmental evals or autism screens?

Also, besides Autism could these failed evals mean anything else?  This all only happened on Wednesday so we're still trying to wrap our heads around it all and not freak out to much.

 

Thanks

kck329

I know that must have been hard news to hear all at once. Especially since it was so unexpected. I don't have a lot of advice but wanted to reply with some support.

My DD (also an 18m old former 27 weeker!) is currently in ST for language delays and it is making a big difference for her. She had to have a new hearing test before working with ST too. I think that's protocol so if you haven't noticed hearing issues at home, don't let it freak you out too much. My DD will be followed for 3 years by audiology to make sure things are all going well but so far nothing has shown up.

Also--now that you've had a few days to digest, why don't you call the developmental pedi back and ask all your questions? I've done that after overwhelming appointments and it helps a lot to get clear answers after you've had a little time to process. I can never think of all my questions in the moment!

 

PS--feel free to pm me and we can exchange emails or FBs...our babes are almost exactly the same age and have some similar struggles it sounds like