Baby crawling favouring one size

[zazzyzaz]

Hi my 9.5 m/o baby has recently started commando crawling. We've noticed that he uses his left arm to propel himself forward but his right arm is more of an accessory to the crawling. We've also noticed that he will bang the table with his left hand and never the right.

Everything else he uses both hands for. He can pass objects between his hands, he can clap with both hands and eats/ plays with both hands. He's meeting his milestones.

I wouldn't be worried but his Dad is saying that this could be a sign of something serious like cerebral palsy.

Does anyone have any advice or experience of this. Is it something to be worried about? Thanks so much.

Not sure if it's the same but my baby would kind of drag his left leg/knee when crawling. His right leg was dominant. It look weird to me but both a doctor and HV said not to worry as he was physically able to bear weight on the left leg.
DC is 19months now and walks normally. I guess he just had one of those quirks whilst he figured things out.

@ftm30 thank you for replying. That's reassuring to hear.

Anyone else? :)

My son did this. I would go to a chiropractor or osteopath and get him checked out, in my sons case he had a lot of tightness on one side of his body. After quite a few sessions he then began crawling normally

Thank you that's good advice.

I've just realised there's a typo in the title... need to figure out how to edit!

Google torticollis. My son has this and it meant he favoured one side. His torticollis went, but he still favours one side slightly when clambering up the stairs!

Oh that's interesting. His neck seems ok, but maybe I can't spot it. How did you get this diagnosed? And what treatment did you provide?

If his neck seems totally fine then I wouldn't expect him to have torticollis... but im no expert. We noticed he looked more to one side than the other when he was born so took him to the health visitor at the (now closed down) children's centre... they referred him to a physio who had a look at him and diagnosed him. Treatment was literally just physio - she taught us exercises and we did them a few times every day. Once his neck was getting better we noticed an imbalance in how he used his arms but we worked on exercises for that too (restraining his good arm mostly) and that worked well.

@surreygirl1987 thank you for replying. We've been watching him the last couple of days and have realised he definitely prefers to turn his head one way rather than the other! Feeling terrible we are only just noticing this at almost 10 months. I hope it's not going to be too late with doing physio for him. Going to the doctors on Monday

If you haven't noticed until now then surely it can't be too terrible! My son's issue was really prominent and resolved within months so hopefully yours will get sorted quickly! Definitely push for a physio referral at doctors. If they say no, go through HV instead. If the waiting list is too long, you can also consider a private physiowhile you wait? We paid £120 (but in Surrey so expensive area) for a private neuro-physio to come to our house to do an assessment when my son was tiny. It was worth it for reassurance. We only used her the once because the NHS physio was great but it might be something to consider if affordable? Also there's a fab Facebook group for parents of torticollis babies/children if you do a search. It may not even be torticollis but it might be useful! Good luck!

Update in case anyone's interested... took him to the GP today who couldn't notice anything unusual and said nothing to worry about. I guess I'll just watch and wait and hope his mobility evens up over time!

A further update. He's 18 months now and walking fine.

Thanks for the update - great to hear :)