Wife of a Wargamer

Feeling drained, so this might not be very coherent, and certainly not cohesive.

We had our first speech therapy session today, and it was uneventful. At this point she lady, M, is still doing the assessment, which at this age mostly just consists of her asking me if he can do something or not. Treatment will be done more at home, and the therapy sessions will be modeling the treatment Matthew and I are to carry out with him. It's all they can really do for a not-even-2-year-old.

I asked M at the end of our session what she thought was "wrong" with Elijah. I asked outright if she thought he was autistic and she doesn't think he is. She's not sure if perhaps he has a facial weakness which is keeping him from using his lips to articulate more front sounds, resulting in the throaty sounds like vowels and the glottal stop he is so fond of. He also has the 'n' and 'd' sounds mastered, and I think that is in large part because of where his tongue hits his soother.

She didn't insist that his soother goes, but she did recommend it (which makes sense, because losing the soother might help, and it won't hurt his speech.) I feel so sad though, like getting rid of the soother is leaving behind all traces of babyhood. It's definitely coming though, I just need to be brave and do it.

I asked M, rather desperately, if she thought Elijah would EVER talk. I wish I could say her response was, "Of course he will! He'll be perfectly normal in no time!" but she didn't. Her response wasn't completely deflating, it was just more along the lines of, "Well, these changes don't happen over night, and we'll have to wait and see, but there is definitely progress to be made, and we can get him communicating much more than he is right now...blah blah blah..." I do think he will acquire some words, he is understanding so much these days (and pointed to his first picture when asked today! I'm honestly so excited by this...) and he makes sounds for things, so words WILL come, I just don't know how many.

I know I've been talking about fear a lot lately, but it really is scary, not knowing if your child will ever speak. You never really realize how much of life hinges on speaking, or at least comprehending and communicating back at some level. It affects every aspect of "normal" life, every hope or dream I have for him (at least in this life...) like gaining an education, serving a mission, having a wife and family, giving talks in Primary and church, singing songs, saying "I love you," or even just calling me "Mommy." All these things I fear I'll never hear, that he'll never experience.

So that was not so encouraging from today. I'm glad we're doing something, but it hurts that we HAVE to do something. On some levels, though, today was reassuring too. The best way I can describe it is to say that I feel validated in my concerns. It's been really difficult, this past year, having worries for Elijah, having these fears deep inside of me, and having next to no-one acknowledge them. First it was because Elijah was still young, he was still within the realm of normal development, although falling behind bit by bit. Then it was because he still had time. Always there were the anecdotes of people who didn't start talking until they were older, and these anecdotes were always given to me as proof that I shouldn't worry. It's been...lonely. I've felt alone in these fears and concerns, less so once Matthew admitted a couple months ago that he is starting to get concerned too. For some reason, that seemed to lessen my own burden. Now that we've started speech therapy, and M has confirmed that Elijah is delayed, I feel like someone is actually listening to me and DOING something about it. That's all I ask.

Anyway, that's really all for today. A downer of a post, to be sure, but it's out of me now, and hopefully some day I'll read these old posts on my blog and smile at this me, and remember how I worried my chatterbox of a little boy would never speak. At least, that's my hope and prayer.

What I'm wondering, though, is if all kids are this much...trouble for lack of a better word. I knew that there would be hardships that come with having children, but I didn't imagine that we would first worry about spina bifida, then Elijah's milk allergy, his lack of weight gain, now speech problems and a new tomato allergy. Not ALL kids have allergies, right? Not ALL kids have speech problems, right? Not ALL kids have to go through appointment after appointment and an MRI at 6 months to check if they have SB or not...right?

I am fully aware that my little molehill of troubles in puny in comparison to the load that some are given to bear, but they are still difficult and real to me.

Anyway, now I really have beat the dead horse. What more can be said?

So off to bed I go, because 5.5 hours of sleep wears on one just a little (and no, it wasn't because I have a newborn...it's because I had a new book to absorb myself in, and I'm fool enough to choose reading over sleep sometimes. Because I'm crazy like that.)