Speech Progress

It has been a while since I updated last and I am really sorry! A lot has happened since then, but we have been really busy this month.

Baylor had a quick outpatient surgery at the beginning of May to get tubes in her ears because she had been having so many ear infections. I sometimes wonder if some of her speech delay has been because could not hear because of fluid on her ears. She probably had around 6 ear infections from November to March. She had no complications from the surgery and her language is improving a lot! On a side note, Baylor was a major fighter when she came out of surgery. Apparently anesthesia and Bay do not agree.  Thank goodness it was not much anesthesia or that could have been a lot worse (you can tell this traumatized me)!

Back to her language, we cannot really figure out what has caused her huge jump in speech but we are so happy to sit back and listen. She repeats so much now, whereas before she was not repeating but maybe a few words. Now, it is amazing. She is working hard to say what she hears and she is using her words in the appropriate places. For example, when she was at school last week and was being put in her place to sleep, she said, “Sleeping, oh no!” That’s a whole phrase! We do not always get phrases, but we get told occasionally “eat” when she typically would never say anything about wanting food, or tell us or others “bye” before anyone else is saying it. Baylor labels things more. She spontaneously told her therapist, “choo-choo” and went to play with the toy train. She told me “leg” when I was putting her leg in her pjs even though I did not say leg. What is really cute is she will sing a song that is in her head but we don’t always know which one.  Her best repeating comes from a movie we watch by the Zinghoppers. They do music and have dressed up characters and Baylor sings and mimics what they do to all the little details. Almost each time we watch it she shows me something new she can do or a word in a song they sing. God is blessing her and us tremendously!

Another thing we have been doing that may be responsible for her leap in progress is chelating. I may have gone over this already but just in case I have not, here is the skinny. Baylor takes a chelating agent called DMSA by pill twice a day that smells terrible that she totally loves to take. It attaches itself to her heavy metals by pulling them out of her organs and out of her body via urine. It takes some good minerals, too, so we give her extra supplements after the chelating days. We go three days on eleven days off of this process. We test her next month to see if her metals are less present than they were before. Please pray specifically for her on this treatment.

Baylor has progressed in so many ways lately! She is comprehending  so much more and interacting with our world in ways we have not seen. She ran up to an office assistant when they opened the door to take us back and put her arms up for this complete stranger to hold her.  She picked her up and Baylor was just fine with it. She recognized it was time for her to go back and went for it before I could even get there. We are just thrilled with what God is doing in her life and we are looking forward to each day.

The other idea we have that could be what is improving Bay alone is Our Healer. I would not rule out Him healing her all by Himself. My God preforms miracles and is alive and working in our lives. Regardless if He was going to do it with no help from doctors or through the use of doctors, we have no doubt He's responsible for her healing.

We have our regular doctor appointment in a few weeks and we need a referral to a neurologist to rule out seizures. Once we do that, I think we may be done for a little while on specialists. We may do genetics testing. That could be fun. Her teachers think she may be having little seizures throughout the day that are not the major seizures you think of and they think we should rule out any genetics issue as opposed to a pure autistic issue. Either way, it is all neurological and we have a few more doors to walk through to rule everything out.

Speaking of fun, we are looking ahead to a walk in September. Saturday, September 8, 2012, we will be participating in WALK NOW FOR AUTISM SPEAKS, for Team Baylor. Please consider donating to this organization. They are funding research to help families and children with autism have better services, a better life, and looking for a cause. Please donate if you can, any amount would be wonderful. Also, if you would like to come walk with us for Team Baylor, we would LOVE to have you join us in Nashville! www.walknowforautismspeaks.org/tennessee/baylorsfamily.

So much love and blessings!

Team Baylor