Be Aware

It is weird talking to other moms, young and old, who don't have a child with Spina Bifida. When you talk about not being able to wait for your child to crawl and move around they are fast to warn you that is not something you are looking forward to because they are into everything. Well, for us who have children with SB, you can't wait for them to be mobile. That is a big deal when they move on their own, crawl to get a toy or in Teak's case, anything that he is not supposed to be getting into. We want this normality to occur. Why is that we seem to knock down a development of a human child? What is so "uh-oh" about these milestones that we tell parents to beware and not wish and want?
Teak became pretty mobile once he turned 8 months. He had started to move around more rather than just sit stiffly on a mat to play. He began reaching for toys more and working on moving his body to reach for toys. He understood that you could pull the toy basket closer to him to get what he wanted. (Sigh, it is crazy to watch a human being grow...think about it...crazy!)
Back when Teak was only 2 months old we started getting physical therapy through Easter Seals which is a division of ECI (Early Childhood Intervention). You have to make a 6 month goal with them so we made our goal to be rolling from back to belly and belly to back. Well, my child didn't like rolling. He was pretty sure that he didn't want to roll ever. He very well knew that we could get him the toy we just placed out of his reach and darnit he was going to fuss until we gave it back to him. Rolling didn't seem to be an option for him. Well, then we realized that he hated to be on his belly which a lot of babies do and so he would have such a fit and arch his little back to the point where he would make himself roll to his back. After a while he definitely got that one down and as soon as you would place him on his belly he would reach his arm up and roll to his back and then he was fine. He would completely shut off the tears and be happy again.
As the months went on we would work with the physical therapist ,and work by ourselves when she wasn't there, on rolling back to belly. He just wasn't having it. Then around 4.5 months, I realized that he had enough back strength to sit up on his own. Now, he would start to fall over sideways after a minute or so but then around 5 months he could sit pretty well unassisted. He had such a belly on him by now that that helped to keep him up right plus he kept his legs out so straight. I would work on bending them constantly and making him side sit and he would just plop those legs back to straight ahead and he liked them nice and stiff.
Back to the rolling, well, we finally got it down when he was about 8.5 months. He would fuss and throw a fit then finally flip from back to belly. Only after he had figured out how to push up from belly to sitting was motivated to roll from back to belly because the end result would be is favorite position of sitting. Except now that he was moving around he would actually go directly to a side sit or with bent knees! Thank God, literally, I was afraid that would never happen! Just shows you not to have fear, things happen in their own time.