Let's Get Physical

The best part of ECI compared to all the other specialists, is they come to my house. It's one appointment I don't have to travel for. This week, ECI came back for another physical therapy evaluation to determine if it could be time to start his physical therapy up to work on his head control and stiff limbs like our neurologist suggested.

There were two physical examinations that were completed. She was looking at gross motor and fine motor skills to see what Beckett was able to do and she basically gave him a score. He should have been between 96-116 on the scale for his age at this point. For gross motor, he scored a 78, and fine motor he scored an 80.

She noticed that he is lacking in his head control, he does have stiff limbs and clenched hands, he's resting his head to the right rather than going both directions, and his hands remain at his sides rather than trying to grab things in front of him.

We set three goals to hit by the end of July:

1) she would like to see him holding his head up for 3-5 minutes in an assisted sitting position

2) turning his head equally to both sides

3) he can bring his hands together in the middle of his body

The therapist also asked me a series of questions about some different things I may be noticing from him (different cries based on needs, facial expressions changing for a familiar face, recognizes being touched by a familiar person) and based on my responses he scored in line with a one month old in some areas and a two month old in others.

All of this to say we knew he was behind, we just had to get them to come in and see that for themselves in order to get physical therapy going. She believes that he would definitely benefit from PT, which we already know, we still had to go through the formalities.

Once we have our first session, she will continue to come every two weeks to work with Beckett and give me more tools to work on at home with him.

Next up is the get a speech evaluation to address the bottle feeding concern, so we should be getting that on our schedule in the next month or so.

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