Has anyone any experience of low core strength in a baby 9-10 months old?

[Millie3]

My husband are considering adopting a baby girl 9-10 months old but some concerns have been flagged up to us concerning her development. My social worker has just told me about this site and suggested I post to see if anyone has been in a similar situation.

The little girl is currently crawling, albeit commando style (so she isn't crawling on all fours equally), but is currently unable to sit unaided so they think there may be issue with her core strength. Apart from a weakness in one of her legs at birth (which has been improved with physio) no other physical issues have been diagnosed. Her mother was a crack cocaine addict - and of course with a lot of adoptions these days developmental delay of some sort is almost a given - but our social worker feels that this little girl's low core strength is at the top end of developmental delay. She is doing well in all other areas now - bonding, sleeping, eating etc (at 5 months she suddenly showed improvements in all areas - medical professionals have been keeping a close eye on her), although she is a low weight (but her birth parents are of slight build). She has been with one foster family since she was discharged from hospital at 5 days' old.

We have fallen in love with her, but want to make sure we are armed with as much knowledge as poss before progressing. I wonder if anyone has any experience of adopting a child with similar issues, and whether these have then improved or as the child has grown more issues have come to light? As our social worker says, in a child so young it is so difficult to know what this may mean in the longer term!

Thank you!

Hi. I have no experience but I didn't want your message to go unanswered. If you type in Low Core strength into the top serch box, it brings a lot of topics relating to it in the Special Needs area of the site. It might be worth posting this messgae in there too, as some of the posteres are a lot more aware of these diagnosis than I am.

Good luck. I hope you find what you're looking for

I adopted a little girl at 10 months who also was born drug addicted (6 weeks in SCBU), and I know how horribly difficult it is to try to get any useful information at this stage. There is so much uncertainty.

Have you been offered the opportunity to talk to the medical advisor? If not, I would push your social worker for that. If you haven't already, you may also find it useful to try the adoptionuk.org forums, where there are loads of experienced adopters.

Very best of luck to you.

Thank you - that's helpful. I'll try posting a message in the Special Needs area.

ReneeVivien - we haven't quite got to the stage of being offered the chance to talk to the medical advisor, as we've just expressed an interest. We were given the extra info by our social worker yesterday and have been asked to go away and think about it, do some research and then confirm back if we still want to be considered ...

I'm also going to try the Adoption UK website - like you say, there may be someone else with experience.

Thanks for your best wishes!

Problems with muscle tone can sometimes be attributed to cerebral palsy (dd2 has cp and low core tone. The issues with limbs also sound familiar) but as the problems seem quite mild (late sitting but crawling) and she is getting good physio it all sounds reasonable.

Core strength can be worked on a lot - gym ball work is great for tinies, and as the little one gets bigger there are loads of exercises that will help.

With her history there are a lot of unknowns, however...

Fwiw, dd2 didn't sit until about 12mos and needed loads of support, crawled at around 15mos, but didn't walk completely independently until about 4/5. She finally got rid of her walking frame after yr r. At 8 she runs, walks, goes to ballet, etc etc.

No idea if any of this is even remotely helpful, but I would be expecting at least weekly physio from a professional, and daily exercises being done by the current caregivers. And probably portage... The earlier the intervention, the better.

Good info from outofbody..

My DD also has low core tone and had problems sitting up etc. We are still working on it but there is lots to help improve strength e.g. swimming, horseriding even if the tone remains low. Try this website for exercises and advice on low muscle tone www.skillsforaction.com/?q=node/22

My DS has low core body strength, he was premature, very low body weight and failed to thrive at first. He was not particularly delayed in walking, but seemed to find it very difficult and was sort of floppy and extremely uncoordinated and fell over all the time. We were referred to a physiotherapist, and had sessions twice a week between the ages of about 14 months to 2.5 years. After that it was reduced to once a week for a year, and he was under specialist observation until the age of about 5. We were also told to do a lot of walking and swimming and sports that helped build up core strength. So now he does karate and gymnastics, luckily he enjoys them both.

He is clearly left-footed and slightly ambidextrous (he took a long time to decide which hand to draw/write with, but now writes with his right hand, but he cleans his teeth and uses scissors with his left and other things like that). At the time, the professionals thought there could be some sort of dyspraxia, but he seems to be growing out of the problems.

He is now a rather tall and gangly 7 year old, and people are surprised when I tell them he had problems when he was young. He still tends to fall more than over children, is rather uncoordinated and very clumsy, and has a lot of silly accidents (falling over his own feet, toppling off his scooter for no reason, falling off swings because he forgets to hold on, that sort of thing). But he will be fine, this should not impact his quality of life.

I don't know whether this helps at all, as I guess in your case given the uncertain history you could want to know how much the lack of core strength is connected to the history of drugs, and how this could be related to other possible complications in the future. I would push to speak to a medical advisor if possible. It is hopelessly difficult to get accurate assessment at an early age - the prognosis for my DS, although his family and medical history was known and more straightforward, was very uncertain when he was little, so I imagine that with an uncertain background it would be very difficult to assess.

Good luck!

Thanks for all your posts - it's really helpful to know that there are things we could try.