Tuesday, August 7, 2012

The Littlest Cowboy

Cohen has been riding horses as part of his occupational therapy. At this point, he lacks the balance or upper body strength to stand/walk, so the idea is that riding the horse makes him figure out how to keep himself upright. He seems like he is so close to walking. I know if it was up to him and everything was in order, he would skip walking and go straight to running. I'm hoping that within a few more weeks of horse riding and OT he will be there.

For some time, Cohen was seeing two different OT's. One came out to the house and one we went to see. I have to say that while we enjoyed our time with the therapist who came out to the house, we didn't feel like we were being given solutions to Cohen's issues. It was kind of an accident that we stumbled upon our current OT, but I am so, so glad that we did. It's not that there was anything wrong with the 1st OT, it just wasn't a great fit with our family and our needs.

{Ready to ride}

 {Waiting for his horse}

Within our first couple of visits, we were seeing huge changes in Cohen. We were reassured that most likely, the problems we were having wouldn't be long term and that there were things we could do to help. Cohen was having a number of problems with development steps that he missed because he was premature and spent a lot of time in the NICU. He didn't know how to self soothe, was needing to be swaddled constantly, and we were fighting him to eat. It was frustrating to not know why this was happening or how to help him. We breathed a huge sigh of relief when we found out that Cohen just needed to fill in in a few steps that he missed. Even if she had told us that these were going to be ongoing or permanent issues, we would have been relieved to know that there were ways to help Cohen.


 Susan has given us hope and we have seen some incredible changes in Cohen. She is incredibly insightful and able to explain things to us in ways that make sense as well as offering ways for us to help Cohen become stronger and more confident in his abilities.



I am so thankful for all the resources that are available to us. I'm so glad we found Susan when we did, at a time of incredible frustration for us and for Cohen.

5 comments:

  1. I'm so happy for you guys! We are about to start OT with our foster daughter for similar issues as Cohen it sounds like, so I'll be praying we have someone as great as Susan.

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  2. She sounds like such a great OT, I love her creativity and how she doesn't just follow a set program. Wish I lived closer and could use her too!!

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    1. Sounds like a good reason to move closer to me!

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  3. So glad for resources like this! Cohen is such a cutie!!!! :)

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  4. I'm in love with that first picture.

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