United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

Are TENS, EMS and NMES the same?

No,TENS is for pain relief, NMES is to stimulate the muscle fibers to contract and build muscle.
Marieke

Courtney,

How is your daughter doing? What is the severity of her injury? Just curious?
shari

My daughter was 10 months when she started the army crawl and crawled on all fours at 12 months. Walked at 15 months. She had a nerve graft at 6 months. She is now almost 5 years old and is about 95% recovered.
My son (non-bpi) crawled at 10 months and walked at 17 months. So.....all kids will do their own thing when they are ready injured or not. I know it's hard not to compare to other children.

Dear Jake's Mom,
My son was a big baby, and he preferred combat crawling. I think it was more about him being a big baby, than his injury. He was a little late about it, but we did try to encourage tummy time, which means mom has to be down- doing her "tummy time" too He did the fist thing too, like other mom's have mentioned. And, months later started using his hand flat more. We were blessed with a son that was obsessed with balls and balloons. That was our biggest therapy tool- forsure.

My daughter had really bad torticollis, the twisted neck, continuing until she was about a year and maybe a month or so. Her PT to stretch those muscles were very uncomfortable for the little tik, at very diaper change. She was always comfortable chilling on her tummy or spinning to her back.

Checking out the family photo album, it was very soon after the torticollis resolved itself that she began to crawl, a year and three months. But she crawled very briefly and very successfully, and was walking at 16 months.

My daughter just started 3 weeks ago with crawling at 13 months. She started to crawl in combat style at 9 months.

Our PT suggested to train her with a scarf under her chest to lift her from the floor. We only had to help her just a little. After one week she suddenly started to do it herself. I didn't expect that to happen at all. She still crawls in combat style in 25% of the time.

She wears a hip abduction splint. At 12 months she got a different type of splint with more free movement. Since then her development is going very fast. She now also manages to get up the stairs.

For the interested: you can see her crawling at the end of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxztZELUoGo

Zavian did the "monkey-scoot"...right hand and left foot thing. It was soooo cute, and she was faster than my neighbor's daughter who had no injury!!!! Please try and have patience, your son will "get it" sooner than you think.