Therapy Week Two.
We start by reminding everyone that I am a quiet sort of soul, the kind who prefers to work at home, and who already has two different babysitters in her life, lovely babysitters, absolutely, but daily reminders that I have somehow veered off my life's path of becoming one of those elderly North Carolina gentlemen who sit in solitude, through the day's length, waving kindly and slowly to all passersby from the social safety of the green rocking chairs on their front porch.
Add to this path-veering two new people, named here as the OT and the PT (and who, to protect their privacy will never be named or described). OT comes on Tuesday afternoon, PT arrives with the breath of the morning wind on Fridays, early (though we had an additional session this morning, just a day later).
It's been the oddest of weeks, filled with attempts to google "hypotonia" or "infant low muscle tone," which on one hand finds me, in ten clicks, an excellent iVillage discussion board, several neurology Q and A's from a clinic in Cleveland, and a very sweet, bare bones site written by a child, now grown, who dealt with hypotonia his entire life. I imagine all the follow-up testing we'll have to do, after reading accounts by mothers who have passed their young children through gauntlets of neurologists and geneticists, only to learn that a) no apparent cause is discernible, or b) a cause has been found, but it's untreatable and incurable, anyway. Plan: continue with therapy interventions. I worry, because we too, are headed down this path, perhaps, ready to immerse in a world we are unprepared for and have not yet found a wise mentor to help us navigate.
At the other, I read descriptions of babies who are so floppy they can't sit, and can't nurse, and I think that Amelia is quite moderate. I sheepishly asked this question of the PT this morning, and he agreed, saying that most likely Amelia will be fine. I start counting her small achievements, like how at this morning's breakfast, no Cheerios feel on the floor. Because of the way she grips and grabs all the Cheerios in her hand at once, half tumble to the ground (usually to be squashed into the floor by everyone else). Today: nothing. Perhaps already she's getting stronger. At this end I am in the moment.
Add to this path-veering two new people, named here as the OT and the PT (and who, to protect their privacy will never be named or described). OT comes on Tuesday afternoon, PT arrives with the breath of the morning wind on Fridays, early (though we had an additional session this morning, just a day later).
It's been the oddest of weeks, filled with attempts to google "hypotonia" or "infant low muscle tone," which on one hand finds me, in ten clicks, an excellent iVillage discussion board, several neurology Q and A's from a clinic in Cleveland, and a very sweet, bare bones site written by a child, now grown, who dealt with hypotonia his entire life. I imagine all the follow-up testing we'll have to do, after reading accounts by mothers who have passed their young children through gauntlets of neurologists and geneticists, only to learn that a) no apparent cause is discernible, or b) a cause has been found, but it's untreatable and incurable, anyway. Plan: continue with therapy interventions. I worry, because we too, are headed down this path, perhaps, ready to immerse in a world we are unprepared for and have not yet found a wise mentor to help us navigate.
At the other, I read descriptions of babies who are so floppy they can't sit, and can't nurse, and I think that Amelia is quite moderate. I sheepishly asked this question of the PT this morning, and he agreed, saying that most likely Amelia will be fine. I start counting her small achievements, like how at this morning's breakfast, no Cheerios feel on the floor. Because of the way she grips and grabs all the Cheerios in her hand at once, half tumble to the ground (usually to be squashed into the floor by everyone else). Today: nothing. Perhaps already she's getting stronger. At this end I am in the moment.