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?

After countless hours and months of frustration my little man walked.

We have had a long and hard battle with Ronan when it comes to his milestone delays. At 6 months corrected we were told that he needed physiotherapy. This really upset me and i felt the guilt flood back to when he was born prematurely. The guilt of Ronan being born so early took quite a long time to get over so to now be told that our child was physically challenged really took the cake.

To see him roll, crawl, stand up were such proud moments for us even though they were very delayed. I know each parent is shocked, suprised and overjoyed when their full term babies reach a milestone, then you can only imagine the elation a parent of a premature baby must feel.

I am still in a state of disbelief but Ronan walked about 10 steps from the door to me last week. Ronan 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!! He was SO excited that he was giggling.

To come from an ex 27 week premature journey to finally seeing your toddler start making the move towards walking is an overpowering feeling. Hopefully in a few years to come we will be able to turn around and say “what milestone delay”?