I went kind of back and forth about posting this because I've had a pretty chill approach so far to L's development. He is healthy and I know that all babies develop at their own pace, and his old pediatrician kind of blew me off and said he was fine whenever I expressed concern over the fact that he's been late with basically all of his gross motor skills. Well, a couple of weeks ago we switched pediatricians (that's another story but there were a million reasons why), and his new one referred me to the Early Intervention program. His evaluation was done this past Wednesday, and he qualified for help with his gross motor skills and speech, meaning he has at least a 20% delay in those two areas.
Now I find myself kind of freaking out - I'm not sure why, because the early intervention people were very reassuring that we should be able to get him back on track and that it's not a serious delay and shouldn't affect him long term...but I guess I'm just scared it will. He's 13 months old and only has two words - dada and baba, although he doesn't seem to understand the meaning of either. There are some simple commands he understands and will listen to (no, come here, etc.) and he babbles some, but the number of sounds he makes is just very very limited. As far as the gross motor skills go, he isn't walking, cruising on furniture, or even standing independently. Up until this week he wouldn't even let you stand, he'd just yank up his knees so that his feet weren't touching the floor if you tried to make him.
There is really no one I know who can relate to any of this, and I'm just feeling pretty alone in all of it. The last couple of days have been particularly bad because I've just been around tons of other babies his age and literally every single one of them was standing independently (at the very least - most were cruising or walking) and had at least a few more words than him. So I'm just hoping to hear from anyone who has been there with either of these delays.