PT Update

Last week we got in again to see Pat Winders down at Children’s.  I loooove having her at our fingertips- she’s such an awesome lady!

We hadn’t seen her since before Piper started walking.  In fact, we saw her about 4 days before she started walking, and she gave us the magic exercise that got her started in the first place.

With Piper’s IFSP coming up in June, I wanted to see her to make sure I wasn’t missing anything before then.  She knew I was due soon, so she got us in suuuuper quick so we could get in before the kid came.  Nice, huh?

90% of our session revolved around us chasing my barefoot, diaper-clad child through the hallways of the hospital.  The only time she stopped moving was when someone came out into the hallway and she had to say hi.  I think we had 30 people standing in their doorways watching her.  It was pretty funny…

At one point, I was taken off-guard because she used the term “hyperextension”, which I have never heard in reference to Piper.  I thought to myself “I guess it’s about time”, until I realized that your hips are supposed to hyperextend backward when you’re walking- that’s what gives you the “normal” gait.  Go figure. 

I have noticed that, on occasion, Piper’s left ankle rotates in a liiiitle bit.  I wanted her thoughts on it, and that was a large part of the reason I wanted to see her.  We talked about it a bit, and she does pronate in when she’s doinking (hey, it’s in my vocabulary, so it counts as a word, right?) around, but when she’s really deliberately moving, she’s fine.  So we’re on the watch-and-see approach; since she’s able to move through the movement, Pat didn’t see it as true pronation, but we’ll watch to make sure it doesn’t get any worse.  Just what I wanted to hear!

Our only goals are jumping, tricycle riding, and true running.  She’s pretty close to running (her “quick step” is really quick, but she doesn’t have both feet off the ground at the same time to qualify as actual running) and so she showed us the holding position to try and help her.  And then she said that maybe it would be a good thing to work on after the baby comes home, lol.  Love that lady.

I also had her look at her chest and how it healed from surgery.  She felt around for a minute and agreed that her fascia is definitely stiff underneath.  Unfortunately, because she’s a kid, there’s not a lot we can do about it.  With adults, and people you can reason with, you can massage it to loosen it some, but Piper would have none of it, so we’re moving on to the next best thing- watch it to make sure it doesn’t get any worse.  She said the best thing we can do is make sure that she’s getting enough movement in her day so that she’s forced to take really big breaths.  And after our running-around-the-hallways-for-an-hour episode, we agreed that wasn’t really an issue.  Hopefully as she grows, it’ll grow with her, and things will eventually get back to where it’s supposed to be.

She always gives us an “age assessment”, or whatever they call it, for where she’s actually functioning.  “We’ve” actually made up several months from last time, which really thrills me.  No wonder it seems like she’s grown up overnight! 

(Did you know that dollies need PT, too?  Piper routinely makes her babies do the same exercises that she does.  It worries me a little- she’s pretty treacherous.  I wonder if that’s her perspective of ME???)