When Baby's First Shoes are Prescription

Moms worry. About anything and everything under the sun at some point.
As a society, we're used to it. We expect it. So much so that we tend to ignore motherly worries wholesale - including the ones which should not be ignored.

When our third child took a little longer to get moving than other babies her age, I wasn't worried. Kids develop at different rates, right? Anyway her brother and sister were late walkers too.

But Felicity wasn't moving at all. She could sit, unsupported, by 4 months, and that's where she stayed.
She wasn't rolling, crawling, creeping, scooching, or doing any other method of locomotion.

At 6 months.

At 9 months.

At 12 months.

At her 9 month doctor check up I was worried. But when I mentioned she wasn't crawling yet I was brushed off. Told to wait for the 12 month visit.
So I did, but something didn't feel right about it. 5 months seemed like a long time to go without any gross motor improvement in an infant.

Searching online wasn't much help. Parenting forums are filled with anxious parents concerned about their offspring's progress. Most of the answers involve something along the lines of, "My child wasn't crawling at all at 10 months. Then he started walking out of no where!" Only to mention a comment or two down that "out of nowhere" meant, "after months of extensive OT and PT".

At 11 months I was done with waiting.
Done with getting told that "mothers are often worried too early."
With being told it would be easier for me once I "had more experience with child development" (which apparently two previous children of my own, four younger siblings, and a crowd of nanny and babysitter kids didn't achieve.)
Done with being treated as an anxious worry-wort for having valid concerns.

I put in a referral to our state child development program. It's a long process of: phone evaluation, in person interview, in person evaluation, a meeting to go over the results, a meeting to decide on a plan. THEN we can finally start getting help.

It's not easy to qualify for services in just one developmental category. Felicity really only struggled in gross motor. Her fine motor skills are excellent, she had been using a handful of words for a while, and clearly did not struggle with social or mental skills. She just needed help with gross motor, but she needed it badly.

Bad enough to qualify.

For a child this young, a physical therapist comes to our home once a week. I work with her to create challenges for Felicity that are built into her natural routines, using items we have in the house.

She has made a lot of progress! She started army crawling. Then suddenly was up on her hands and knees crawling. She was pulling up to her knees to get items from the top of the coffee table.

But something still didn't look right.

When Felicity was put in a standing position she would clench her toes like mad, her hips were crazy turned out, and she was not stable on her ankles in the slightest. Even with her increasing muscle strength, she still wasn't getting any more stable on her feet.

The therapist decided it was time to talk about orthotic help.

The appointment to get fitted for ankle orthoses was hard for me. The orthotist noted how incredibly hyper-mobile Felicity is - not just in her ankles but over her whole body. How almost overdeveloped her muscles have become because of her attempts to stabilize her incredibly unstable joints on her own for so long.

It wasn't hard to hear because of how much my baby needed help. It was hard to hear because I should have known better.

I have generalized hyper-mobility.
I have to work hard to stay with a certain level of muscle tone just to keep my pain levels down.
I have to be smart when I move to prevent injury.

How do you respond when your child has inherited your struggles? How to feel when your child is hurting - and you had something to do with it?

More of this story next week!

Because it's getting long...

Update: The follow up is here!