[grumpy31700]

I just brought my son home at 11 months old, he was very low in weight and my doctor believes that is the reason for his developmental delays and low muscle tone. We are feeding him extra formula in his bottle in order to get his weight up. We have an social worker coming to our home in order to evaluate him and get him in to physical therapy but they cannot come for 2 weeks.

I was wondering if anyone has done physical therapy with thier infant and could give us a few pointers on helping him get an early start.

I have him doing a lot of tummy time (he screams when he is on his tummy) and we also put a rolled up towel under his chest when on his tummy to force him to use his arms more.

Any help would be great!

[cjrogers]

Our son is currently receiving (PT/OT) and lots of tummy time. What we do is get him comfy on his tummy and get him to roll from back to tummy and tummy to back (coaxing him). We also sit him up and help him balance and have him reach in front and to the sides (for building the abdominal muscles). We also coax him to reach his arms over each side while sitting up and balancing him. We do it in short spurts because he hates tummy time...

However we did get a boppy and he likes that and it helped and I also got him some toy mats that play music and do things (like spin around, move around, etc) that gets his attention. He likes this alot.

Just keep doing it with him, 2 or 3 times a day and try to get him up to 20 minutes each "therapy" session, I bet after a week you'll see improvement, we definitely have. Good luck! They start catching up fast....

Editing this to say: If you can play with him with your spouse or partner or a friend when he's down there, do that... the more they like it the more they learn.... even if you can get him on his belly for 1 minute at a time before he starts screaming, you're making progress... just try to get him to enjoy it, even a little bit...

[mevertin]

Hi,
We did about 4 months of PT with our son when we brought him home in 2005. One of the recommendations from our therapist was to have him sit on a tiny, low bench. If he sat on the floor and then we put him on the bench, you could see how he sat taller and used his back and tummy muscles to balance himself. I stayed with him the whole time and supported him at the hips. I also would put toys on the floor in front of him and he would reach forward to pick them up and then have to get back to sitting. You could really see how hard he had to work those muscles. I am an Early Childhood Special Ed teacher and we almost always had our "low-tone" kids sit on a bench instead of the floor to use their muscles more actively. I used the step stool my kids used in the bathroom as our "bench." It was something very simple that was easy to do and made a big difference. Good luck.
Mary

[Kimberj71]

I just wanted to send you words of encouragement. Our son came home in 2004 at 6.5 months old and was low tone, especially on one side. It was very scary for alittle while, especially because his "older" sister who is just 6 weeks older was doing sooo much more than he could.

He did p.t. for a few months and caught up to the low end of normal development. Now, 4 years later, you would NEVER know he was such a low tone kiddo. Even his pediatrician is amazed. He is smart, funny, and has amazing eye/hand coordination and ball skills.

Hang in there, give your little one lots of physical stimulation and experiences where he has to move to do things. Physical therapy will help a ton. Some day it will all be a blurry memory.

Kim

[Shilo32]

I just wanted to pass along a few ideas. I am a pediatric OT and tummy time is great. One of the things that you can also do to encourage core (trunk strength) is to use a small ball (12 inches) and use is like an adult therapy ball. (kind of the same idea as the bench) and sit your child on it - the feet should be on the floor and gently bounce him. Support him at the hips with your hands, Initially he may really not like this, because he is probably going to feel like he is going to fall. Also you can put him on his tummy on the ball (which he probably won't like and roll him forward a little - if someone else is in front of him, you can encourage him to reach for toys and object - this will increase the neck strength for extension and shoulder strength as well as the trunk. Even just a few minutes at a time a few times a day can really help. A really easy one to do without any special equipment is to position him on your knee if you are sitting. Have him face you with one leg on each side of yours and hold around his ribcage and gently bounce him - you can sing some songs as you do it.
Hope that helps. When he does eventually start getting more nutrition in him, I would use straw cups (as opposed to sippy cups) to encourage his tongue and facial muscles to get stronger - to later assist with speech development. Also, right now you can start doing bubbles and encourage him to start blowing bubbles - as that will also work on strength.
One last thing, children love tunnels (pop up tunnels that you can fold down in seconds, so crawling is a really good way to develop strength and the tunnels are motivating to crawl through.