"Paediatric Care for Baby with Significant Gross Motor delays"

At our baby's 6 week GP appointment in Sept 2025, they had suspected dairy allergy, failure to thrive and a mark on their forehead which our GP noted and sent referrals for a Pediatrician appt. By their 4 month old appt in, the same issues were flagged by the child health nurse and GP sent another referral for a Pediatrician. By 6 months of age, our baby was not progressing in their Gross motor and fine motor skills as expected and we still had no appointment for a Pediatrician.

I found a Paediatric Physio and booked an appointment for an assessment.  Our Physio found our baby to have significant Gross motor development delays as well as low muscle tone and suggested we see a Paediatrician ASAP. In the meantime we started with intense Physiotherapy to assist with our baby's gross motor development. 

Our GP sent another referral with the Physio report and we recieved an appointment withing about 3 weeks of submitting, Feb 2026. 

A doctor assessed our baby and was able to get us in for an Ultrasound on their head within the same day which we were very grateful for. We also had a full panel of bloods run and have been referred on for Genetic testing at PCH (Still waiting for referral to be accepted). Our Ultrasound showed enlarged Ventricles in our baby's brain and suggested an MRI.

An urgent referral was sent to another hospital (Feb 2026) who rejected it after 2 weeks due to they don't do MRI's on Babies under 18 months old. 

Another urgent referral was then sent to PCH (March 2026) and we did not hear anything for a further 3 weeks.  After following up multiple times, I was advised that someone did not send the consent form with the referral and was told PCH "Threw out" our referral. A complaint was made and i was assured this was not the case and it had been accepted.  We are still waiting an appointment for our baby's MRI (Apr 2026) and have been given an approx wait time of 3 months before they will see us - Estimated June 2026. 

I had looked into trying to get this done privately and faster as we had a large trip planned and booked in June 2026 but no hospital except PCH will do an MRI on baby due to the required sedation so we have no choice but to wait and cancel our trip. We have no way to know what is going on inside our baby's brain and if they are safe to fly.           

I am quite disappointed with the health care system at this stage. It appears that referrals are ignored unless you send repeatedly. Also I feel the waiting times for a paediatrician are not ok. As an example, my eldest still has a referral in the system from Jun 2022 for a Paediatrician. 

Also our referral for an MRI was submitted as urgent but its taking 3 months to get in for an MRI - so it does not make sense how it can be required urgently but take so long.