Hello Everyone, thanks for continuing to read this. A couple things on my mind today. First of all Therapy. Kara has now qualified for Occupational Therapy and Speech Therapy. This is on top of her regular Early Interventionist visits as well as Physical Therapy.  As her mother, I am getting a little overwhelmed. She is 16 months old, does she really need 4 hours of therapy a week? Physical Therapy we are keeping for sure. She really does need Physical Therapy. We don't really have an option on the Early Interventionist but we are keeping her too. Now the new ones are OT (occupational) and ST (speech).  The Speech Therapist told me that she should be saying 50 words by 18 month and putting two words together. Now Kara is only 16 months but she certainly does not have an extensive vocabulary. To me 50 words seems a little on the excessive side for normal children. The question I am running into though is: is she a little behind but will catch up and start speaking when she is ready? or is it: She is a little behind because of the Dandy Walker Syndrome and needs Speech Therapy?  Matt and I have always tried to get her the help she can use but I am beginning to feel as if it is taking over our lives. I still want her to be a normal child and do the normal child things. It is hard to do that when you have therapy. Kids are resilient though and take on what ever you give them (well at least Kara is). Something my speech therapist said to me though that has stuck is: Kara will be fine with what ever you give her, but if you (speaking of me) is overwhelmed it will be a detriment to her. She is right as always. So here is the question: am I ready to take on 4 hours of  people coming into my home a week. The other option is to break them up some and have speech or OT once a month or once every two weeks. Then of course I have the option of not taking them all on right now just taking on what I think she needs. Lots of decisions to make and just wanting to do what is best for my baby girl.
The other thing on my mind. I was looking at support groups on line for Dandy Walker Syndrome and stumbled across a site that was a support group for terminated pregnancy from medical diagnosis. I scanned through about ten posts and was shocked that over half of them had terminated their pregnancy due to a diagnosis of Dandy Walker Syndrome and even more shocked about how little they knew about it before making the decision. Dandy Walker is not a well known condition, only 1 in every 25,000 children are diagnosed with it and so many pregnancies are terminated due to it that there isn't much known about it at all. We were advised before we adopted Kara to talk to someone who knows about it and the resources available. We decided to take Kara anyway, and we talked to a neurosurgeon afterwards. There is a chance at a normal life for these kids. Even if there isn't, they aren't suffering. So many parents say they wanted the baby but they didn't really. They wanted a perfect child and there are no perfect children. It just broke my heart to hear these ladies say that they did this out of love for the child. If they really loved the child why didn't they get more information and give this child a chance at life. It was so heartbreaking to think about all these children who are just like my child who could have made this world a better place. Once again I just give thanks to God that Kara's birth parents loved her enough to give her a chance at life. I also thank God that I have the opportunity to be her mother. I just pray that there is something I can do to help educate people that terminating their pregnancy isn't the only option. As long as you love that child more than yourself you can do this. Anyway, that is the burden of my heart today. How to educate people on the options these children have. Look at my child and pray for the mother's trying to decide what to do with their child's diagnosis. Pray that the choose life and give their children a chance.