And Another

Yep, we're adding another therapy session to the schedule. Several people including Susan the PT, and the neurologist had suggested that we go through the city's programs to see what services they would recommend Imogene receive. After completing all the evaluations and the mountains of paperwork, we're finally done. At first I was really just going through all of this so that we'd be in the system when Imogene got to preschool age. At that point there are federally-mandated services that she would receive free, and I wanted to have her in the system before we got to that point. It seems like a lot of people end up not knowing they need the system until around that age. So anyway, I was all prepared to just decline their services until a later date, since we are very happy with our PT/OT therapists - if not so happy about going there twice a week. But the city speech therapist agreed that Imogene's communicative skills are behind (at about 11 months, when she's almost 16 months) and recommended regular speech therapy. Receptively and socially they said she's right on track. I had been trying to get our "regular" once a month appointment for speech on the calendar at the therapy center, but they are booked solid for the foreseeable future. So I'm taking forever to explain this, but we're going to do speech therapy with a private speech therapist (set-up through the city) twice a month. In the end, I have to say that I am happy with the way it turned out with the city - until I met the coordinator this week I would not have said that - so I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised with the speech therapists. If we're not, then we'll just find something else. She has a few words - "dada" and "doh" for dog are her best. She's started making an "ohhh" noise when something falls. She says "mamamama" but it's not as consistent as "dada." Every time she sees Bill or a picture of Bill she says it. She does say something akin to "hi." But she's not really making many other consonant sounds. She also isn't imitating any sounds we make. At this age, Lily repeated almost any sound you made. Tonight though, I swear she tried to say "woof woof" when I asked her what the dog says. It was more like "woo," and she had her top teeth completely over her bottom lip, but it was something! I think the speech delay is bothering me more than the PT and OT - maybe because Dr. McClintock had specifically told us he didn't foresee any speech problems. Maybe it's because Lily has always been such a talker. Maybe I should remember that you just can't know for sure what's going to happen - you just take each day for what it is - not yesterday, and not tomorrow. Just today.

I've been remiss in updating Lily's hearing issues. We saw a nurse practitioner at the ENT's office. She saw the fluid, and recommended we treat her for allergies for a month before doing anything else. So we're giving her Flonase at night in addition to her other allergy medicine. We go back June 11, and they will give her the hearing screening again. If the fluid is still there, she'll need tubes. If it's not there, then we assume it was allergies. I have to say I'm pretty skeptical that it is allergies causing the fluid, because I've noticed her hearing being 'off' since way before allergy season. But I hope I'm wrong.