13mo old.; trying for Early Identification

October 26, 2006

I am new to this group and trying everything I can to get my son

help early. My son has had a history of mild motor delays and EI

has been in the picture since 2mo. old due to knee surgery at 19days

old (thanks to a staph infection from the hospital at birth that

settled in his knee). He was born at 35weeks. Most of his motor

delays are caught up (so much that PT and OT discharged). I got his

OT reinstated b/c she is leaning towards Somatodyspraxia dx. He

does have a history of very mild vestibular issues (they think this

played into slow to roll over, discomfort on swings etc. Now he is

a bull in a china shop, crashing and banging into everything. He

has been dx with hypotonia by a dev ped. along with a dev delay. At

a recent Ei eval, he qualified for speech. he drools excessively

(contatntly soaking wet), has open mouth posture all the time,

stuffs his mouth and swallows things whole (never had feeding

issues, he is in the 95%tile for wt and has always beena good

eater). he has reflux that is treated my meds. I am so confused

b/c his speech therapist told me that apraxia is on her radar right

now. he has not tried to imitate any sounds we make up until 13mo.

old. He now says " moo " at a whisper and 'ball " but it looks

incredibly effortful. It's like he's concentrating with all his

might. he has difficulty with sign language, although has some

signs. he is definiitly " groping " when he's trying to imitate. But

if it's apraxia, why can he make raspberries on command etc? If

it's a motor plannign problem, why can he make those sounds but not

speech sounds? He also does not babble with consonants. He

uses " duh " for everything. Eveyrthing is vowels. I notice him

staring at my lips when i talk. He has tubes in his ears at 10mo.

old due to 50% conducitve hearing loss from chronic fluid. His

hearing has been normal since then. He gets EI speech therapy 1x/wk

and the OT will do 1x/wk again soon due to SI issues. Does this

sounds like apraxia to you? I guess I am trying to find out if I'm

doing everything i can for this age. it is so hard b/c eveyrone

promotes early identification but without a dx, it's hard to get

much. Also, there arent enough trained people/research to

identified things this early. Frustrating. Thank you in advance!

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