Developmental anxiety or developmental problems

[Anxiousanni]

Hi

im looking for some MN guidance and wisdom. I have a nearly 9 month old baby and out of my mind with worry.

Basically I’m very worried she has a developmental delay or some significant health problems / disability. I have looked at lots of milestone markers for this age including the ASQ. She can do most of the things on that list but

• only babbles infrequently (we talk and read to her a lot)


• can’t follow simple command eg come here


• Can’t wave bye bye (has clapped but with lots of repetition and encouragement)


• Can’t walk along furniture with only one hand for balance

is she meant to be doing everything on the 9 month ASQ list? Is it quite abnormal for her to be a quiet baby (eg is this a sign of delay / problems)?

full disclosure - the pregnancy and birth were dreadful. Anomalies on the scans and had amniocentesis (which was all clear). Very traumatic birth and baby went to nicu while I was in IC.LO Very slow to regain birth weight.

I already take meds for Mh but had very significant PND and post natal anxiety. I am obviously pretty primed for something to be wrong given that’s the overwhelming message I got from health professionals throughout pregnancy and birth.

I know the advice might be to go to health visitors but I absolutely can’t. The one that came round at 6 weeks was horrific and told me my baby was failing to thrive and then told me off for being anxious. I asked for a different one, she came round and was completely useless. I cannot trust the service.

The Gp has said she thinks everything is fine (I have seen the gp repeatedly monitoring baby weight and also with my concerns). Baby was seen by a paediatrician at 3/4 months who said everything was fine. my concern is they just see my anxiety and write it all off as that rather than listening to my concerns or they know that if there is something wrong with her there’s little they can do at this stage.

sorry for such a rambling post. Any advice would be appreciated. The anxiety is just eating me up and I’m struggling to have joy / stay focused on my (much much wanted) baby because I spend all my time looking at milestone markers and comparing her to other babies

thanks for reading this far if you have x

Sounds like you've had a pretty rocky start to parenthood

I've no idea on the progress of your DD sorry, it's been a while since mine were that age but I just wanted to give you a couple of options to help you. This Progress Checker from ICan might be useful though. It is just a guide but says at the bottom what to do if it flags up any concerns.

Do you think some specialist Counselling for your Birth Trauma may help? Birth Trauma can often affect you more than you realise and if you are naturally anxious you should benefit from talking through it with a Professional.

The The Birth Trauma Association have a Helpline, email service and FB group and can put you in touch with Counsellors who specialise in Birth Trauma.

If you've got PND has anyone mentioned the PANDAS Foundation to you? Their Helpline is open 11 am to 10 pm 7 days a week.

And I know that you don't have much faith in the HVs but it might be worth asking if there's a group locally for Mums with PND. There's one in the next town to us that was set up a while after I had my DC. A couple of DFs have gone and benefitted from going to the group.

Thank you for replying - i really appreciate it.

The Ican checker was useful, thank you. It very much confirmed my concern there's something wrong - i did it and it said I should seek help from a professional because I answered 'no' to important questions so at least I have some evidence to go back to the GP with now.

As for the other stuff - I'm doing some therapy around birth trauma. And have tried to find help locally but there is very little. If there wasn't anything to be anxious about then I would feel more emboldened to go find more help, but there are clearly issues with my baby and she is delayed according to milestones/checkers so it's probably best to use this to spur me forward to get help for her.

Honestly I think your DD is fine and I’m talking from experience. My DD wasn’t doing any of those things at 9 months - she didn’t even babble until just after her first birthday, didn’t pull to stand and cruise until shortly after. She walked at 15 months and now she’s 26 months and talking.

With the ASQs, baby is definitely not expected to be doing everything in each section. It's usually 4 or 5 'yeses' in a section, although I think 9 months is on the low end of that, generally 4 'yeses' would mean development looks on track. This one has the scoring sheet at the end:http://www.oxfordpediatric.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/asq9.pdf www.oxfordpediatric.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/asq9.pdf. So if it's just those few bits your baby isn't doing yet, it sounds like she's doing really well in most areas.

There's perhaps a slight delay in communication, depending on exactly how many 'yeses' versus 'sometimes' you would put, but it sounds like she'd at least be in the grey for communication. It's really very common to have a section or two in the grey, and usually just something to monitor – the questionnaires are designed so roughly 1 out of every 7 or 8 children will score in the grey. In some cases it is an early sign of difficulties, but most of those children will be fine without any extra help (and may in fact zoom ahead in that section later on when their interests shift).