Is Physical Therapy a Good Thing?

As most of you know, Hayley has been getting Physical Therapy (PT) since she was about 3 months old because she was diagnosed with Torticollis. This is basically that her neck tips to the left side. We like to call her tippy...just kidding. Anyway, so CT has this great program called Birth 2 Three (B23) that is virtually free that helps little babies with development issues, regardless of what they are. So they have been coming to see miss Hayley for a long time. She no longer tips, but her developing is slightly delayed, like she's not rolling yet. Stacey is her therapist and I have not met her until yesterday. She was going to daycare and then when she did come here she was with Dave while I was at work. So when she arrived, I was eager to meet her and get started, especially since she hasn't had therapy in about a month b/c she was sick and the b/c I forgot last week and went to New Hampshire (oops). Anyway, Stacey arrived at 3:00 on the nose and we were ready. I put her down on her tummy to begin working on her rolling and military crawl, and out bursts tears. Now Hayley cries, like all babies do, but not like this. She was in complete hysterics. Whatever we did, she cried and cried and cried. I was in shock. I couldn't believe she acted this way! She was so upset, nothing would soothe her except me holding her. I tried a cracker, nursing, toys, everything. Now Dave told me she was upset at the last 2 times she was at the house, but I had no idea it was like this! She said she doesn't act this way at daycare. After over 30 minutes of complete hysterics, we gave up. Happily she went on her way to playing with toys and babbling and singing, just not doing her PT. I was so shocked words could not even come out of my mouth. What a waste of an appointment.

I was able to proudly show Stacey Hayley's new fun thing to do - pulling herself up onto her toy box. So she happily did this and Stacey said, is this the way she always does it? I said yes. She then very nicely told me that it is not the correct way she should be doing it, and showed me the correct way. (I reread this sounding as if Stacey is not a nice person - she is VERY nice and patient and wonderful to Hayley) Ok, so she's not rolling and crawling, but she's doing all these other things, and she's just skipping around a bit. I am thrilled to have this service for her for free, but at the same time, I find it frustrating. I am so proud of my child for making these progressions, and feel discouraged by finding out this is not the "right" way to be developing. Who cares?! She will be just fine. She will walk and talk just like every other baby. Why do they have to spoil it for me? I will continue to work on trying to get her to roll and crawl, etc, but if she doesn't, that's ok...it really is.

Well, since she is no longer going to daycare we had to come up with a solution so she doesn't cry for the entire hour. So next week she's going to the Leone's and we'll see how this works. Hopefully she won't cry the whole hour again.