If you take a look at my past posts about our daughter you can clearly read that she was behind in reaching certain milestones. When we took her to her one year well baby visit, she wasn’t walking or talking. We had many concerns but her doctor indicated to us that she would do these things in time. He eased our minds and we just began working with her more than before at home. We would help her pull herself to a stand so she could strengthen her legs. We got her a push toy so we could get her use to walking. We read to her any chance we got. She was making progress but not enough to make our worries go completely away. We took her in to her 18 month well check right around her 20 month mark (procrastinating at best) and after we addressed all our concerns and showed the doctor what she can and cannot do, he decided that she was in fact developmentally delayed. I knew it. My husband knew it. Even before we went in. We just didn’t want to believe it. Your babies are born perfect. And nothing can change your mind that they aren’t. But that’s just it. No one is. We all have our disabilities. It’s whether or not they require attention. Whether or not you choose to get help for them. We decided to do anything and everything the doctor recommended. He handed me a packet to fill out and mail back to their Early Childhood Development Department. That day at work, I read every line of that packet of paperwork. Twice. Then again slowly. I let every word and every question sink deep in my brain so I understood completely what it was saying and asking. I filled it out. I reviewed it. Reviewed it again. I kept thinking for each question..”can she do that?..umm..yea I think so..no, she can’t.” I wanted to badly to believe that she could do everything they were asking. But who would that help if I kept blinding myself of what was really going on? No one. She wouldn't get the help I could clearly see she needed. It was devastating to read that all except a few answers were marked, “not yet.” Can your child do..A,B, and/or C? Not yet. Can he/she do..blank? Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. It broke my heart. Tears welled up in my eyes all that day. There is a problem. Right there in front of me. In black and white. All I wanted to do was hold my sweet daughter and rock her and tell her that everything was going to turn out fine because Mommy and Daddy would do whatever we could to help her. I had posted a photo of Raegan on Facebook that day letting family and friends know of the journey we had ahead of us and my husband’s grandma contacted me to get in touch with her as soon as possible. I called her the second I got off work and she told me she use to sit on the board at California’s Alta Regional Center for Early Childhood Development. She told me that she would contact them and get the ball rolling on evaluating Raegan to see if she was a candidate for this program. When I reviewed the paperwork the doctor gave me, I read that the forms were to have her evaluated in their own developmental program within their own medical foundation. Once they accepted her for treatment they would evaluate her further to see if she was a candidate for Alta Regional. I was torn whether or not I should follow her doctor’s recommended steps or to just jump into having her evaluated with Alta from the pulled strings by my husband’s grandma. After talking everything over with my husband, we decided to just go straight with Alta instead of going through referrals upon referrals just to ultimately get to the same outcome. Raegan was going to get the help she needed if my life depended on it. No matter which way we went, that was the main goal. Within a week and a half my phone was blowing up with therapists calling to schedule her evaluations. I had spoken with her case worker that was assigned to her to help manage Raegan’s treatment plan a few times by then. It seemed like in no time at all we could see the light at the end of the tunnel.
This was the picture I posted on Facebook originally and I got an overwhelming amount of support from all our family and friends.
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