Today was Alexander’s first session with the physical therapist. She comes to the house once a week to work with Alexander and provide us with some exercises we can do with him to strengthen the left side and train him how to get the most use out of that side of his body.
For example, one exercise involves pushing his hip to start him turning over and making sure he doesn’t chicken out of the roll. The idea is to get him started and let him complete the roll, extricate his arms out from under him by himself (the left arm obviously is a little harder for him to work out), and then lay there on his belly whilst he uses his neck muscles to support the weight of his head.
Another exercise involves sitting him up so that he can start learning balance as well as gaining strength and endurance to sit up on his own.
The therapist’s rating is that he is at approximately 4-4½ months developmentally which would be pretty close to on-target for someone who slept for the first two months of his life and obviously didn’t work on some of those baby exercises in that time. She also felt that there was stiffness on the left side that had been noted by others and the range of motion for the neck but she indicated that the muscle tone was good and that she could work with him to maximize his abilities.
And that just gives us incentive to get him rolling all over the place and doing all of the other cute baby stuff when she’s not looking! 🙂