Brynnlee has been in early intervention and speech therapy for 10 months now. JD and I were getting really worried/frustrated because we were not seeing any progress. She would once in a while say "mom"and then every now and then she would say spontaneous words. If we tried to get her to say them again it was like she had no idea how. I was talking to Kellie (a lady from the gym), she was asking me about Brynnlee. I told her our whole saga and how we just didn't know where to go from here. She told me that B reminded her of one of her really good friends kids. She called her friend to see what he was diagnosed with. Her friend told her it was Apraxia of speech. I went home and researched everything I could on Apraxia. Everything I read described Brynnlee to a 'T'. Apraxia is a neurological disorder where the part of your brain that has all the language in it, doesn't communicate with the part of your brain that tells the muscles in your mouth how to move. She has all the language and understands everything you say to her, she just can't get her mouth to form the words.
At this time we were on our 2nd speech therapist, but I made an appointment with a private speech pathologist just to have her evaluated. We went to the appointment and gave her whole history. He tried a couple of drills with her and said, "I think she is apractic". I don't know if relieved is the right word to use but we were happy to have some doctor tell us they could put a name to what we were dealing with. This is the first time any doctor had said, "this is what it is and this is how we treat it". He could tell we were not shocked at the news, which I guess many parents are and they take it really hard. He said he usually doesn't take them this young because they are so hard to work with, because apractic therapy is totally different that regular play speech therapy. It is very repetitious and not fun at all. It is hard to find a therapist that will work with an apractic child. I know for a fact that we were guided to his office by a high power. He told us he would work with her because we had been trying everything else and it wasn't working. She has hated both sessions so far, but that is to be expected. Our other speech therapist still comes to the house and works with her. I have talked to her and she is changing things up, but not to the extent that Dr. Hugh does.
Good news is that she says "mom" now quite often. I almost cried the first time she said "hi" to my mom on the phone. I never thought I would be so happy for her to say "no" but she has learned that too. She sometimes says "dad" and "bye bye".
It will still be a long time before she is talking and putting words together, but we have a direction to head. We have lots of work ahead, but she is totally worth it!
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| Brynnlee at her check up. She is still not on the charts (or even close), but all of her previous health problems are totally gone! |
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| She got into the chocolate when I was in the shower. But seriously how can you get mad at that face? |
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| One part of her therapy is nursery rhymes and music, the rhythms and cadences help her distinguish breaks. |
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| The other day we put her to bed, about an hour later she started crying so I went in to put her back to bed. She was pointing to her eye so I kissed it better and put her in bed. She came in our room the next morning with this shiner! I felt pretty bad. She must have hit it on something when she fell out of bed or walking to the door. |
