Understanding | The Blog of Rugrats

Healthy baby and more DS understanding

Edry had his follow-up check with our paediatrician (PD) this morning, and he passed with flying colours! The doc noted that his jaundice is looking better, which means that Edry’s liver functions are getting better (yay!). His lungs, heart and everything else checks OK too. I only need to put some lotion on him since his skin is a little dry. Dang that phototherapy lights! He also reconfirmed with me that Edry doesn’t have any congenital issues (health problems present at birth). I asked him about the possibility of Edry getting atrioventricular canal defect (AVCD), a common problem among Down syndrome children, and he said if it’s not congenitally detected, then he won’t have it even when he grows up. What a relief! PD mentions that I only need to be on the lookout for ear infection due to his low muscle tone.

The doc and I went on to talk about other things, specifically the early intervention programs (EIPs). He handed me a leaflet of Seri Mengasih Centre, so I thought I’d share it here.

Early Intervention Program

For babies, toddlers and young children from 0-12 years old with:

Cerebral Palsy

Intellectual Disability

Motor Coordination and Sensory Impairments

Day: Every Wednesday
Time: 2:30pm for assessment, 3:30pm for playgroup

Program follows a multi-disciplinary approach involving:

Physiotherapy

Occupational Therapy

Sensory Integration

Counseling / Assessment

Conducted by:

May Vivien Lim, Physiotherapist, B.Sc. (Physiotherapy), Australia

Jasminah Ali Umer Kutty, B.Sc. (Physiotherapy), Australia

Florence Lajangang, Occupational Therapist, B.Sc. (Occupational Therapy), United Kingdom

Fee structure:

Annual membership fee payable to Seri Mengasih Centre (including free access to the Resource Library): RM50

Payable to the therapists:-

Preliminary Assessment (45 mins, one-off): RM50

3-sessions per month (1 session is 45 mins with all therapists): RM75

Extra one-to-one therapist session: RM50

This is a really good start for me. I got tons of information and more understanding of the types of services and therapy I can get from non-profit organisations as well as government centres. I think I’ll just do a different post for that later. For now, I’m taking a little time to be grateful to the Lord concerning Edry’s health check.

9 July, 2010 in Exclusively Edry, Life in General, Raising Kids by Mommy (Lorna) Add A Comment
Tags: assessment, AVCD, baby, congenital, down syndrome, early intervention program, early intervention programs, EIPs, Hypotonia, low muscle tone, Non-profit organization, occupational therapist, occupational therapy, paediatrician, physiotherapist, playgroup, Rehabilitation medicine, seri mengasih, Seri Mengasih Centre, Therapy, understanding

Learning about Down syndrome and disabilities

Notice that I now have a new page called Down Syndrome in Sabah? Now that I have Edry, I have developed a passion to know more about Down syndrome and other forms of learning disabilities, to see what I need to and can do in order to prepare Edry for the best in his life. It’s not meant to be an extensive list, though I hope it is useful enough for other mothers in Kota Kinabalu who are new to this experience a place for them to start off their understanding of Down syndrome.

I initially wanted to create a new blog specifically for this research, because I didn’t want this blog to end up just being about Down syndrome. However, I thought that most of the entries I may end up blogging about would be as emotional as well as factual, and the tagline for this blog is “journeys of life…” so I decided to scrape the idea of making a new blog. It’s also a good thing, because having too many blogs would just be too much for my brain cells to keep up with.

I still have a lot of digging to do, in terms of the types of therapy necessary for Edry. I’ll tackle them one at a time, and hopefully have enough time and energy to blog them as they come.

7 July, 2010 in Family Life, Life in General, Raising Kids by Mommy (Lorna) Add A Comment
Tags: down syndrome, kota kinabalu, Learning, learning disabilities, sabah, understanding

Babies CAN speak

This is post that I made in the old Friendster blog on Wednesday, 29 November 2006 at 10:51 PM.

From Oprah.com:
“One woman says she’s unlocked the secret language of babies! What’s your baby trying to tell you? (There are) five words your newborn already uses. After testing her baby language theory on more than 1,000 infants around the world, Priscilla (Dunstan) says there are five words that all babies 0–3 months old say—regardless of race and culture.”

Links: