Crawling

One of the things that has been quite an experience for us is all the secondary effects of Annabelle's condition. For instance, when we first brought her home from the hospital, she could not have any pressure on her back due to her surgery.

That meant she could not sit in a car seat, bumbo or papazan chair. She had to either lay face down, or be held. For TWO MONTHS. Imagine not being able to put your child down for two months unless they were sleeping. The day we got the "all clear" from the docs to put Annie on her back, the wife called immediately and instructed me to come home with a Baby Bjorn or else . . .

Mobility is another one. Since Annabelle does not seem to have sensation below her abdomen, mobility has never been high on her list of priorities. So far, she can roll from her stomach to her back and, with a little help, from her back to her stomach. But in part because of the weakness in her trunk, she has not managed to go from lying down to sitting up on her own.

This means that the idea of putting her on the floor with an array of toys to occupy herself doesn't really work. She will pretty much just lay there. Which also means that some of the typical developmental milestones go out the window. Is she stacking things? Putting smaller objects inside bigger objects? Well, not so much - since that is pretty hard to do lying flat on your back.

But we are working on it! Everyday we do therapy sessions with the wee one. We usually do them on our bed so whenever we take her into our bedroom, she starts to laugh and squeal in excitement - she loves it.

We usually start with a series of sit ups where she grabs our hands and pulls herself to a sitting position. Then we practice rolling from back to front and back again. Then it is time to crawl. We lay toys out of her reach and cheer her on.

She doesn't crawl so much but rather does a series of strategic falls. She will push herself up and then lunge to one side. This pulls her leg on the opposite side up an inch or so which then serves as an anchor. Then she repeats the process by lunging to the opposite side and pulling the other leg up.

Usually this is accompanied by her grunting out "Goooh Grl!" Which is her version of "Good Girl" - our most common cheer.

It really is something to she the little munchkin struggling from one end of the bed to the other, cheering herself on:

With all the effort she has to put into it, you can see why crawling might not be foremost in her mind. But like I said, we are working on it.