As a mom, I've found that my instincts are usually good. I began noticing small things that worried me about little man before he was even a year old, but I tried to brush them off as first time mom worries. My mom told me I was being paranoid, his pediatrician said not to worry. Until one day she kindly said, let's just see. After all, it couldn't hurt.
That became my litany through extra appointments, speech classes, and finally an insistence on a referral to a pediatric neurologist. We could cover all our bases and be sure we were doing everything Gbear needed. It couldn't hurt, right?
I still was convincing myself that I was just being over-reactive all the way up until the moment the neurologist calmly {but not unkindly} told me, there is definitely something wrong with your child's brain. And now, after a month of waiting for the MRI, followed by two weeks of waiting for the results, we have an answer.
It's one the neuro prepared us for, but is there ever really a way to prepare to hear that your child's brain didn't form the way it is supposed to? That, your wonderful, funny, goofy two year old faces obstacles you could never have dreamed of? Is there a way to prepare to acknowledge that your child has cerebral palsy and struggles you never could have foreseen? Quite honestly, I'm still not prepared. I'll be going about my day and it will hit me like a ton of bricks. We don't know what the future holds for him and what he will and won't be capable of. Luckily {is it really lucky?} his case is mild, but given it's cause, we won't know what it means until he grows. For now, we meet with more doctors and start much more intensive speech therapy and add occupational therapy to the mix.
God only gives us what we can handle, right?
