One Year Therapy Report

Charlie had his one year physical therapy assessment on Wednesday.  Lori brought along a speech therapist (Michelle) to evaluate Charlie's language skills and acquisition.  We'll see Michelle again in 6 months for another check in.  She had lots of interesting information for us.  The primary focus seemed to be that the musculature of Charlie's mouth, tongue and through seems to have a right side weakness.  Michelle gave us lots of tools and excersizes to work with over the next few months.  What this means in the long term is that Charlie may have some pronunciation issues when he acquires language.  He may also have some initial trouble with swallowing some of the more solid foods, which we've already experienced. 

The therapists are required to ranked him at a certain developmental age in a series of categories.  Based on their test and Lori's past year of working with Charlie, this was their assessment.

Language was tested in three categories:

Intelligibility - 7 months

Cognitive - 7 months

Expressive - 11 months

Physical was tested in three categories:

Gross motor skills - 6 to 7 months

Fine motor skills - 8 months
Social engagement - 12 months

Michelle and Lori both reitterated that his progress has been very good.  Since Charlie was on the Phenobarbital for 7 months, they consider his first month of learning, comprehension and absorption of information to be his 8th month.  So if we count from his 8th month of life to now, that's 6 months of physical and language skill acquisition.  By this measure, Charlie has been progressing as a normal, non-brain injured baby. 

He still has to contend with his left side arm and hand weakness as well as his right side speech and swallow issues, but we are thrilled with Charlie's development.  The future looks very good for Mr. Charles Baird.  From this week on, Lori will be meeting two times a week with Charlie.  The Bbay Olympics, as we like to call them, will be in the Greenman house on Monday and Thursday mornings.

And check out Charlie's new pants!  Charlie has quite a bit of hip abduction which needs to be corrected.  The inseam on these funny little bike shorts is stitched together.  It's like a little pencil skirt from the 1980's.  Once his legs turn back in he'll be able to get them underneath his body for crawling, walking and kicking the crap out of his older brother.  Looking good, Charlie!