The day after Lydia’s ABR, she had a BIG physical therapy appointment. On top of all of Lydia’s doctor’s appointments, she is still receiving physical therapy, feeding therapy, language therapy, and they are talking about starting occupational therapy 😳.
It’s A LOT. There’s no other way to put it. But we love Lydia’s therapists and are so grateful for them. We truly are. They encourage me and lift me up.
Since December, our physical therapist has been talking with us about getting Lydie a “stander”. These are quite the contraption folks. Basically, it doesn’t require Lydie to do any “work” but it has a lot of benefits. It is beneficial for her bones, muscle strength and posture, better bladder and bowel function, and even better heart and lung health.
These things are super expensive but we are really grateful that our local child development center has one and that Lydie gets to use it. She has been using it for about 10 to 15 minutes a day and has done really well with it. We will gradually increase the time she is in it as she gets more and more exposure.
Other Developments
Other than the stander, there is not many physical therapy milestones we’ve reached. Honestly, it’s hard not to get discouraged. We’ve noticed Lydia’s posture is getting worse and we worry about those muscles. We haven’t really seen much improvement in any way and it’s a struggle to stay positive sometimes. It’s hard to not have a clear understanding of what her abilities are since we don’t have a diagnosis yet.
One area where we are feeling more positive is in feeding. Lydia has begun eating some “table” foods. She still mostly eats her purees, but she has also begun eating scrambled eggs, pancakes, yogurt, bread with peanut butter, and some soft fruits and veggies. She seems to love the new variety and we are happy to give it to her.
She struggles with getting the food into her mouth and can get pretty frustrated with it, so we usually still feed it to her. BUT we are just grateful she is handling the food and aren’t worried so much about how it gets to her at this point.
We are grateful for kind individuals that have shown Lydia so much love, kindness, and concern. We are blessed to have such a wonderful group with us.
