First and foremost, I'd like to thank all the comments below and all the private emails of those that suffer and still do from high anxiety and repeated stories of heartache. I put it out there because I'm real. It's what we deal with in life and through struggle comes beauty. Your stories were of great help to me to know that we're not alone and I deeply appreciate your words of encouragement.
So to give an Eme update, she's doing spectacular. If you were on the outside looking in, you'd say she's completely attached, bonded and happy. & had she not had that meltdown, I would have assumed that we were doing that great as well. I know we have our issues to work on, and she has really given 'us' a chance to reconnect this week. She has spent time everyday in the pouch and we have played lots of one on one eye contact games with lots of giggles and hugs. She is truly amazing.
So this brings me to our next challenge, NR.
We had her evaluation done last week in Orland0. & though we sort of knew what to expect and the issues that we believed Eme was facing, we were still blown away with all things neurological that helped us connect the dots with other issues. I'm so thankful that Alison has shared her knowledge with me, it gave us a chance to jump start Eme instead of waiting for all those things to be confirmed for us later in life. So many things take place between age 0 months to 12 months that make up the neurological system and when a child is placed in multiple sitting up positions (walkers, bouncy chairs, jumpers, strollers, high chairs, bumbo's, etc) the brain does not have a chance to develop properly. Babies need tummy time and lots of it. It helps to develop eyes, tracking, horizontal and vertical eye movement, cross pattern abilities. Crawling helps to align the body, align the ankles and helps give you the arch in your foot. I could go on and on, but these are the immediate issues that we see with our girl, so that is where we will start. After our 3 hour comprehensive exam, we came home with our marching orders
Eme has work to catch up on in the Pons and Midbrain level & some fun vestibular stimulation stuff.
These are the places where we see her clumsiness, her fear of the park, playground & swings, her inability to use the right and left side of her body, the inability to know her body in relation to space, her vertical and horizontal eye tracking, bad perception of cold, pain and hunger, her inability to all things with a cross pattern, & her prehensile grasp. Had we waited, I'm sure we would have seen some issues in the cortex section of her brain.
Exciting stuff eh?
This weekend we will spend lots of good quality bonding time and Daddy has his work cut out for him with a nice purdy crawling track that needs to be built. Eme needs work on creeping & crawling to help strengthen those things. We are really going back on some issues that should have been taken care of when she was 0-6mo, 6-9mo, 9-12mo & 12-15mo. I would highly suggest an eval for anyone that has adopted from China or any other country that doesn't give babies tummy time and is known for placing babies in upright positions a majority of time &/or
has been in an orphanage/foster care. There's just really no way to know the life that was lived before you arrived on the seen. It's really fascinating stuff.
I'm captivated by it all and I can't wait to watch her grow & change. And while we're having all sorts of pain in the arse fun crawling around on our tile floor, I hope we can see Eme work her magic and tackle some of these issues that will make her life a tad bit easier in the long run.
Gawww, I adore her.
