Ronan is now walking around everywhere. He occasionally crawls but would prefer to walk. Whilst he is great with walking and his balance is incredible he still faces many hurdles with walking. Being born premature was a fight to begin life and what an amazing journey we have had. Ronan has been attending physio since he was 6 months “corrected” due to low muscle tone due to his premature birth. Ronan has taken a long time to reach many milestones, sitting was the longest one to reach but we finally got there.
Ronan was walking a long furniture for i think 7 months before he finally let go. Those premmie fighting instincts finally kicked in and he was a free man! He took his first step without support at 18 months corrected. To be honest i had no idea how much longer it would be before he would then one day he tried and has never looked back since. It was the proudest moment of our lives to see the look of excitement on his face.
Whilst he loves walking and the more he walks the more exercise his muscles get he still cannot bend his knee’s to pick something off the floor without holding onto support. His muscle tone is once again letting him down and we are forever trying to built that strength up by helping him to walk up stairs which is a real struggle for him.
Winning the “Local Hero” award with my council i hope to help other parents with premature babies around my area. I have a few idea’s in the pipeline and hopefully they come to fruitation but it will be a long process one that i hope premmie babies and their parents will use should their babies have milestone delays.
Ronan still has a long way to go with his walking but each and everyday he is growing and learning so much. What else can a parent of an ex 27 week premature baby wish for?
When we were visiting Ronan’s paedatrician last week he reminded me that i had to fill out an 18 month assessment form. The form wasn’t to be filled out until Ronan reached 18 months (corrected) because otherwise the assessment wouldn’t have been fairly marked.
Whilst going through the questionaire and everytime i ticked “no” to the questions my fear of more delays reared. The questions were along the lines of;
- When putting a crayon in your child’s hand and a piece of paper in front of them do they put the crayon tip on the paper (no - he tries to eat it)
- Does your child try to offer their reflection in a mirror the toy they are holding (no - he smiles at himself then looks at me)
- Does he use words put together BUT (not common words ie: no more, where’s dad, all gone), (they are the sort of things he says so maybe he doesn’t know how to speak!)
- Does your child go and get a toy or object when told to (nope - he can’t even walk let alone go and get a toy for me but he did hand me my towel after a shower)
It will be interesting to see the results. Because of the lack of “yes” responses to the questions i am sure he will have to have speech therapy, brain therapy, child therapy ALL dam therapies because he is slow!! Whilst questionaires are great so professionals can assess where a child is, being a parent of an ex premature baby i am now worried about there being a major problem. One thing with a questionaire is that it asks the questions about things your child should be doing but it doesn’t cover questions of what they actually are doing so whilst you may feel that your child is ahead in some things i now feel that Ronan is far more behind than the average 18 month old so the stress and worry has kicked in again. I wonder if premmie parents ever get a break from worrying?
We still can’t believe it!!
I am still in a state of disbelief but Ronan just walked about 10 steps from the door to me.. 
He has been taking little “risks” by walking from lounge to lounge by taking 1 step without support so this is the first time he has ever taken the leap!! Talk about lets get in as many as we can in one go!!!!
Won’t be long now!! It’s funny because the paed was checking his muscle tone and reflexes today to make sure he didn’t have a slight case of cerebral palsy because he wasn’t walking yet.. We were hoping it was going to be by Christmas and it just might be now!!
At 20 months (17 months corrected) he finally took his first real steps!
