Lily's AMAZING Therapists

Lily has three different people who come to our home and work with her.

Her wonderful Occupational Therapist was featured in a video in the last post. He began working with Lily when she was struggling with eating. At 9 mos. she could not eat any foods with texture and she gagged on everything. Her O.T. came into our house regularly and observed her eating, then trained me how to work her up to a variety of foods through lots of little techniques and ideas. Once she was doing well with her eating we moved into working on her trunk (waist-up) strength. He likes to get her reaching up high to strengthen her lower trunk muscles (whatever is wired to work). Some muscles on one side may work more than on the other, but Joel and I are determined to make every working muscle as "buff" as possible. :)

A woman also comes in to the house regularly and does physical therapy. She has exercised a great deal of ingenuity and patience as she has worked with Lily since she was three months old. She has helped her to be able to roll over, sit up and ultimately crawl. We are grateful for her experience and persistence. I can't believe we don't have a picture of her!!

Another fantastic person Lily works with is Mike. He is the physical therapist everyone consults with at the Spina Bifida Clinic. We liked working with him so much, that we have begun to work with him privately. Mike is a positive, happy and upbeat person. We feel that he brings the right balance between reaching for the stars and making realistic goals. This summer Mike met us at the park a few times to teach us how to get her actively moving on the play equipment. He also taught me how to support her and how to properly put her down the slide (so she doesn't break a leg).

Check out a short video with Mike at the park. He taught her how to use the big holes in the equipment floor to put her fingers through and pull herself easier.



Mike has also created his own piece of equipment we like to call the Kangaroo. It is basically a trainer for using a rolling walker. The idea for using the Kangaroo is that someone like Lily (who has no natural way to learn the walking motion) could learn how to move herself around by the sheer force of her upper body and arms. In the future we would add bracing to her legs and feet and take off the top portion. At that point she would already understand how to move herself around. We have a long road ahead of us in the walking department, mostly because she just needs to get bigger, smarter and stronger, but we think the Mike is going to help us get her there.



Take a look at Mike's website.

Lily has also been training for a wheelchair on this little cart. A friend passed it on to us after their daughter didn't need it anymore. Her pink wheelchair officially comes home from Shriners on Thursday!