Experiences with gross motor delays

So, my youngest DD is about to turn 11 months old and is still not even close to crawling yet. All she is doing still is sitting & rolling. She also still cannot eat anything more solid than slightly thickened baby cereal (not even 1 cheerio or puff, which melt in your mouth!), she will gag & vomit every time she tries to swallow real food. I think the swallowing thing goes hand-in-hand with a gross motor delay, but I could be wrong. Her fine motor skills, on the other hand, are excellent she is way ahead of where she needs to be on those, and as far as speech she already has a 4-5 word vocab at just under a year. But the gross motor thing, I'm at a loss. I've asked the pedi about it at every visit, and he doesn't seem concerned, he just said some babies are a little "slow" in some areas such as that, and if she's not crawling or pulling up by a year to let him know. In my opinion, a year is way too late to not be crawling yet and to just be doing something about it. We don't qualify for EIS, but yet we can't afford to take her to OT sessions every week, and my health insurance never agrees to pay for things like that. I guess to make a long story into a short question, when do i start panicking? She's almost a year and still only doing physically what a 5-6 month old can do. Does anyone who has gone through gross motor therapy with their LO know of exercises or anything I can do with her to encourage her crawling? She just can't seem to get the muscle coordination together to lift herself up and do it. She hasn't even figured out the army crawl yet.

I'm getting a little sad b/c her 1st b-day is coming up, and since she can't swallow anything solid yet, I'd hate for her to be gagging and throwing up all over her 1st cake, or even worse, having to miss out on the experience altogether.

 

My boys pt is working on that with them now. Basically she just puts them into crawl position and tries to entice them to play and reach for things. She also showed me how to use my lap under their belly so they can practice bearing weight on their arms. A friend of mine has a singleton and she was worried too. She just started crawling at 11 months. All is fine. I am sure she will soon.

 

my guys are 10 1/2 months (9 adjusted) and owen has only just started cruising (belly up off of the floor crawling) literally yesterday. jacob army crawls a bit but neither one of them army crawls forward, only backwards. jacob is nowhere near cruising. owen has just started eating finger foods, although he still wants to gag if it doesn't melt fast enough. jacob won't even let me offer him anything thicker than thick oatmeal. he gags and vomits on textures.

i asked our pedi about it and we were told to hold off worrying until a year as well. we have an in at PT because we used to do therapy for torticollis. so at our next followup i'm going to ask them for their input to see if they agree with our pedi.

if your doctor agrees to write you a referral would your insurance cover a PT evaluation? it might be worth it just to press him a little bit to do so. you might call your insurance ahead of time and find out what circumstances are acceptable for this kind of medical care. a written referral may be all you need.

 

I would definitely talk to your Ped about it at their 12 month appt. I googled Early Intervention Fort Worth TX and came up with THIS. Not sure if you have pursued this or not and you may not qualify but I thought I would throw it out there.

 

I agree with talking to your ped & possible pursuing some early intervention/physical therapy type help. She may not qualify but it can't hurt to look into it & it may give you some reassurance that she really is doing better than you think. :hug:

 

I posted a few weeks ago about dd not crawling..we had done the early steps evaluatio at 6 months and she did not
qualify, we did it again and now she did...she is going to pt once a week. The therapist explained that there
is a "window" where babies begin/discover crawling, and for some unknown reason, some miss it, so the pt
helps the get the "tools" to crawl. She said that because she is older, once she crawls she won't do it for long
and will go on to walking soon, but it is important for them to crawl first, at least for a week or so. A lot
of it has to do with personality too... she is a very content baby and entratains herself easily where ds is so active
and crawling and standing all over the place.

I have notice the change in her, reaching for things, sitting up on her own more..I find it very beneficial to go,
it teaches me on ways to help her

 

My friend her daughter wasnt' crawling for her 1st birthday but did soon after and very quickly after was walking.

 

I don't know why you think you won't qualify for Early Intervention if you haven't had an evaluation. I would go ahead and request and evaluation (your ped doesn't have to refer you, you can self refer). You can get the contact info from your local school districts special education office. The food issue would be more concerning to me than the movement, but both together should qualify you for services. The eval is free, so nothing is lost by going ahead with one. At the very least, they will tell you that she is OK, and you will have that peace of mind.