Back to Worrying

M is now 14.5 months. He has followed in the twins footsteps in that he is speech delayed. The problem is that the twins finally did start with their first words at 13 months. M is still not talking.

I knew it was an issue, but I didn't think it was necessarily a problem, until today. I had a friend who is a speech therapist come and evaluate him today. She is a good friend who has been around since M's birth and had expressed some concerns over M not talking. She came today and did two different speech tests on him. On one he scored exceptionally low - like at the level of a 6 month old. On the other he scored at the level of an 11 month old. So at the very least he is almost 6 months behind where he should be.

More concerning was realizing how behind he was. I knew he didn't speak, but when she asked about babbling and gestures etc, it hit me that he doesn't do that. She was with us for an hour and she heard no real speech sounds. He should have been babbling and making more noises. He wasn't. It also hit me that at one point he did make those sounds and now he doesn't. When he was an infant my family and I used to comment about how vocal he was. About how he would never be delayed because look at how much he 'spoke'. What happened to that boy?

Another thing he used to do is gesture. Wave bye, shake his head 'no', play peek a boo. Not so much anymore. Infact it's usually very hard to get him to do any of these anymore.

So now I sit here worried. I try to figure out when it started to slow down. When did he change? He is an overall happy baby, who is interactive, loves attention and plays all the time with the twins or I. He is able to communicate his needs to me, but he does break down and whine a lot which my friend thinks is out of frustration because he can't speak. He makes good eye contact, loves to be cuddled on and is a very sweet boy. But now I worry. I worry that something more than a speech delay is at play here. Why did he regress? The twins never did that and until today I never realized that M did that.

I think it was around 10 months. In addition to the slow down in speech and gesturing, this was about the time that he went from sleeping through the night to back to up every 3 to 4 hours at night to nurse - which he is still doing. I remember him being sick when the sleeping thing occurred but it was a simple cold and nothing that caused me much concern or even a doctors visit.

I just hope this is a simple speech issue and that there isn't some bigger problem lurking. Anyone who is a mom can understand my feeling of fear/panic/concern/sadness/worry. You never want anything to be wrong with your little ones and when it's all of a sudden brought to your attention...well you begin to feel a little overwhelmed.