Therapy Shmerapy

Peanut is perfect. I love her senseless. We're getting her therapy because uhm...I'm bored? Yeah, that's it.

Here's what the OT had to say, well just the pertinent parts:

Impression: While Peanut does display some scattered skills (some skill levels are below her age range while others are above her age range), this is very typical normal childhood development. When compared to kids in her adjusted age category, Peanut is in the 35% of children, which is normal although on the low end of normal. Developmentally, Peanut is not expected to be comparable to peers of her birth age until the age of two years old so her fine motor skill development is appropriate. Of most concern to this therapist is Peanut’s difficulty with feeding. She needs to improve her pincer grasp for feeding and begin to eat more table-like foods. It is of concern that she is not able to receive much nutrition from a bottle or a sippy cup because it is not always going to be practical for her mother to always be available to breastfeed. Given her adjusted age, Peanut should be able to feed from a bottle, feed herself table foods such as Puffs and Cheerios without choking, and also able to eat Stage 2 jarred food without gagging or choking. These delays are mostly likely the result of a very slight developmental delay compounded by some oral defensiveness, which is typical in the preemie population.
Recommendation: It is recommended that Peanut receive Occupational Therapy services two times per month for several months to improve her eating and drinking skills. OT will provide Mom with ideas that she can carry out at home during mealtimes and will be available for consult for Mom as needed. OT will also address Peanut’s tight shoulder girdle area and provide appropriate activities for Peanut to complete with Mom to improve range of motion as well as fine motor control.

So, that starts next week. The OT explained that many of the crazy feeding problems we've had, including Peanut's gagging while nursing thing is all related to oral defensiveness. She mentioned laying off the deoderant and scented soap. I thought she was nuts. So I may smell a little more "ode de naturale" but at least Peanut is not longer acting like she's going to hurl any second.

PT had been going soooooooooo well. Peanut was showing dramatic improvement, and then bang! Detour, stopped traffic, delay! She is unwilling to move once she gets into a crawling position or have anything touching her lower legs and feet (she tries to use an uppsidedown V crawl...would be funny except she can't hold herself up and ends up toppling over and hurting herself when I'm not right there). This is the main obstacle to her crawling.

So this week we are doing touch therapy. We are touching her feet and lower legs a lot to try to desensitize her. We're also getting her into the pool or bathtub as much as possible to let her kick her legs. This will get her some more movement and get her feeling movement against her legs. Unfortunately, she HATES the pool, the water is cool, which is probably why. I would THINK with it being so nasty humid and hot here she'd love it, but nope. The one who cannot spend enough time turning into a fish in the cold pool? Mr. Miracle.

So at least the pool is not a waste. I just wish I wasn't paying the water bill to fill the pool AND the bathtub...