Crawling at a Betsy's Pace
Uh-oh, Now She's Unstoppable
Oh wow, where do I begin here? It’s been a whirlwind kind of week. As most of my regular readers know, our baby girl Betsy turned TWO last Friday! It was a big day, let me tell you. It might have seemed ordinary, and in a lot of ways, it was, but seriously, this girl’s on the move—both literally and figuratively.
If you are new here, I highly recommend checking out this post, which will give you a proper introduction both to Betsy and myself. I know quite a few of you have come here after reading comments (either from my husband or myself) on some articles by
about DMSO. If you’d like to catch up on my recent posts, I recommend this one where I talk about how I can just feel that Betsy is on the verge of some breakthroughs (and this is where I first mentioned using DMSO), or this one where I talk about Betsy’s birthday and her newfound interest in the dog. (I know it might have seemed weird how I spent the whole first part of that one talking about Betsy and Lucy and then I tacked on the birthday stuff at the end; that’s cos I started writing about the dog early in the week and figured I’d have it posted before her birthday, but then I didn’t, so I just added in the birthday stuff rather than doing two separate posts.) Anyway, I have digressed greatly, so on to the topic at hand!Now that we are all caught up, yeah Betsy is two now, and that is definitely an awesome and momentous occasion, but we didn’t really do anything special to celebrate on that day. We’d already had plans for a birthday dinner with my in-laws the following day (which was wonderful, of course), and both the older children were off doing other things, as they typically do on Fridays. Ian and I have always liked to use our Fridays well, since it’s usually just us and Betsy, so this particular night we decided to record some vocals for some songs he’s been working on. (Definitely check out Ian’s Substack,
if you like music. I write there sometimes, as well.) We just brought Betsy downstairs to the basement and plopped her on her belly on the rug. She has always loved tummy time, although she usually has just used it for bouncing up and down or pushing herself backwards. She might occasionally prop herself up on her knees (we have a family joke about her being up on her “back legs”), but before this, she’d never really gone anywhere, just a bit of scooting. It’s seemed to me for a long time that she probably could crawl if she wanted to, she just didn’t really see a reason to. I feel the same way about her sitting up. Ian and I were talking about this as she was bouncing around on the rug, and how much closer she’s gotten to sitting up from the way we’ve been playing ball lately. He suddenly got the brilliant idea to use that ball as crawling bait. I gasped and was like, “I can go get her ball right now,” and he grinned and said, “Do it!”So I ran up the stairs and grabbed her orange O-ball, which is one of her favorite things. We have our own little invented ball game we’ve played with her for a long time now, that has evolved significantly along with her development. I’ve shared plenty of videos of this in the past, but really it deserves its own post. Anyway, once I brought the ball down to her, we put it down in front of her just out of reach, and well, I’ll let you watch what happened next. As if the title doesn’t give it away.
I took several short videos in the next few minutes, and while I could have edited them to get the highlights, I prefer sharing this one video here, because it truly catches her first crawling moments. (When I originally published, I put the wrong video on here by mistake. This one is the actual first minute of her crawling. Hooray for editing!) And yeah, she’s army crawling, not getting up on her “back legs.” I’ve heard several Down Syndrome moms say their kiddo never crawled on all fours, just did the army crawl thing. I’ll take it. I also love the way she basically starts playing fetch with herself, picking up the ball and throwing it, then going after it again.
Real talk, I had been worried for awhile about her not crawling and not sitting up. To me, she’s seemed behind even for Down Syndrome, but that’s mainly cos I follow so many other DS moms on Instagram. And I should know better than to get all comparative. Betsy is definitely going to do things at her own pace, who am I to rush her? However, as I suspected, Betsy is indeed taking off. Besides crawling, her sitting up is steadily improving, too! My in-laws got her a seat cover to go on shopping carts and restaurant high chairs, and we have been putting it to good use. The first time we tried it was at her birthday dinner with them, and she sat in the high chair almost the whole time without any problems (of course, both grandparents had to hold her for a little bit, too!), and that was the longest she had ever sat in any high chair. She did just as well the next day when we went out to lunch with my parents.
She’s been doing extra awesome in the shopping cart as well, and both of these wins are such a relief to me! (She still tends to slide over sideways a little in the shopping cart, and that’s what those straps are for. I always have her strapped in in any such situation. You can’t really tell in the second pic above, but she is indeed fastened in place.) Because of those two successes, I decided to try again with a feeding chair at home. For awhile, I was holding her in my lap at meal times, because she simply would not in any of the different chairs we had tried. She would usually just bang her head backward and/or throw a fit. However, holding her was not much better. I basically dreaded meal times. Besides her being all over the place and hard to hold, if I forgot to bring any one thing to the table, I’d have to go get it one-handed while carrying her, or go put her down first. Anyway, her recent successes, specifically in restaurant high chairs, gave me an idea. At my parents’ house, we had a high chair given to us that was in two parts, one that was on wheels and about the same design as a basic restaurant chair. The other part is a regular household-design high chair insert that pops into the rolling base. The base can be used on its own and just be pushed up to the table (I had originally hoped it was low enough to roll under the table for storage), or the insert can be used with a removable tray. So I went to my parents’ house and got just the rolling part. That is what she is sitting in in the second of the two pictures above. It has worked like an absolute dream! She occasionally (safely) leans back a little in the seat, but she mostly sits up properly, and I can feed her without incident, with little to no worries. And just like that, I have my meal times back! I’m almost crying every time I see her sitting there, doing just fine. And this is yet another improvement in her development. I am so proud of her every single day.
Look out world. Here comes Betsy.
I found your substack through A Midwestern Doctor. I have a son with Down syndrome who will turn 18 next Feb. When my son, Alex was a baby I took him to Kennedy Krieger to be evaluated. Another mom of a child with DS asked to hold my baby and started comparing Alex to her son. Nothing she said was negative but at that moment I decided I would limit how much time we spent with other children who had disabilities. I enrolled Alex in pre-schools with children who did not have disabilities because I wanted him to follow them. I wasn't trying to discriminate. There were many days when I would pick Alex up after work and be sad because he wasn't doing what all his peers were doing (crawling, walking, etc). The funny thng is, he would start doing those things shortly after. My point is, Alex reached all those milestones at his own pace and now does some things better than children without disabilities. It seems to me that everyone compares their children to other children, whether they have disabilities or not. It was an important lesson for me. I once went to an IEP meeting for Alex when he was in elementary school and at the end of the meeting I told them that those meetings were so depressing because all they do is focus on the things he can't do. A therapist there pulled me aside as we were leaving and she said "Don't let these meetings get to you. Alex can't do those things YET." It was very inspirational and now I just focus on the things Alex does well and let everything else go. I'm glad I found your substack. I am going to read through them. BTW, Alex now has a close circle of friends in HS that have Down syndrome.