My daughter is now 7 1/2. I took anti-psychotics throughout pregnancy. She had IUGR and I was induced as she stopped growing. She was born in withdrawal and we were in hospital for 10 days.
She had severe reflux as a baby and child, and even now vomits when she coughs. She has a very stiff gait and very stiff movements (everyone always comments that they can spot her a mile off in a crowd by the way she walks). She regularly loses her balance and falls (multiple times a day). She falls off benches and chairs with no back support, but at random times-you can never predict when it is going to happen, she just suddenly goes. She has a “wonky” smile (only one half of her mouth lifts up when she smiles). She also only walks on her tiptoes. She also tends to bring one foot down very quickly after the other one, as children do when they are pretending to ride a horse (think Monty Python Knights). She struggles with fine motor skills, and cannot ride a bike, cannot hold a pen for long, and cannot do buttons, zips and poppers.
She never crawled, and didn’t walk until she was 2. Her right eyelid flicks up and down when she chews, yawns and talks. She also has a congenital ptosis (her eyelid entirely covers her right pupil and iris). She finds it incredibly difficult to get to sleep, and again to stay asleep-she goes to bed about 11pm, wakes a number of times in the night, and then is up for the day at 6am. She struggles to walk far, and complains of pain in her legs or her legs “giving up on her”, so I carry her on my back in a sling when we walk the dog.
Her speech is brilliant, she has always been fantastic at toileting, and while she had petit mal seizures up until the age of 2, these stopped. She is also being assessed for autism.
I have been to the GP twice with my concerns, and he actually laughed at me and told me to stop being ridiculous. I try not to think about it too much, but today she tried out at trampolining and her movements were so clearly dissimilar to those of the other children in her class-the only way to describe it is that the others moved with a kind of ease and fluidity, whereas my daughter moves in more of a “flip-book” style of motion-she jerkily moves from one position to another. The coach actually came up to me and made a point of saying that the girl teaching was on the national team for those with disabilities.
Part of me thinks I am being absolutely ridiculous-it would definitely have been picked up by the age of 7, but the other part of me thinks that all these things together must point to something. I’m scared that I’m failing her.