Physical Therapy Today!

{Worn out from PT}

Hooray for another day with baby toes!  I can’t begin to say how much I enjoy Mason being able to find his toes for the first time today when he was sitting on my lap.  He thinks they are quite interesting things.

Today we had a visit from Mason’s physical therapist Caylee and she was just about as excited as we are over being freed from the foot brace for daytime.  She put him through his exercises to see what he can do currently, how his flexibility is, and how much stronger he is getting.  All in all Mason is doing really well. 

Our next big goal is to work on rolling over independently.  It may take months.  We just have to wait and see.  He is determined and ready to move, so that will work in his favor.  He has grown stronger.  It will just be a matter of patterning (showing him how to roll over and back, over and back) and letting him gain the strength to figure out how to do it himself. 

Now that Mason’s shoes are off all day we can work on his feet flexibility too.  His right ankle is not as flexible as we would like to see, so we’ve got a new dorsiflexion stretch that involves holding his calcaneus (heel bone, which is not in a normal position) with his knee bent and stretching the foot up.  We then work on straightening the leg while doing the stretch.  Oh, and we have to watch out that we are stretching the muscle at the back of his leg instead of letting his foot bend in the middle, which it can do somewhat because of his lack of muscle use in the foot.  It’s a bit awkward but I’m sure we’ll have the new exercise figured out soon.

He’s also going to have tons and tons of tummy time and rolling practice.  We guide from his pelvis and only help as much as he needs to be successful, letting him do most of the work.  He’s definitely developed some strength in the lateral abdominal muscles already, which is what he’ll use to pull his lower body where he wants it to go when rolling.