My Two Daughters and My Proudest Memories

I will start with my 4 year old, Juliana, first. Juliana is a very cute, bubbly, and witty little girl. However due to severe allergy and asthma problems, Juliana has had severe speech issues. At 23 months she finally started talking more, but when she talked it was nearly impossible to understand her. We found out after several speech sessions that her speech issues were caused between 10 and 22 months old before that doctor started treating her for severe allergies and consequently terrible asthma issues. During that time everything Juliana heard was muffled going in. When she talked, she said muffled sounds. The two biggest things that stick in my head are daddy and doggy. At 2 years old Juliana was unable to say both...daddy came out as Da-ee and doggy came out as Daw-ee. At 32 months she qualified for services with Early Invention to work on her articulation. When she turned 3 she moved to IU-13 for speech services. Any child who is served by the IU-13 gets an IEP (individualized education plan).

Fast forward to 4 years old (one year later). I recently had Juliana's goals meeting for the year to review her IEP and we were discussing whether she had achieved the goals we set up one year prior. My "proudest moment" was listening to her goal which stated, "to be able to speak in 3 word phrases." I couldn't believe my ears. First off I did not remember the goals we had set up for her, but she had LONG AGO achieved that and now speaks in very complete, elaborate sentences. She is VERY understandable. Her goals now are to perfect her language skills by the time she hits Kindergarten. Perfection...as told to me by her therapist would mean that she would have the language skills of an 8 year old. We never anticipated that she would come SO FAR in just one year, but she brightens my days whenever I think about how far she has come.

Onto Sweet Mikayla who is a healthy, troublesome, and cute as a button 22 month old. At 29 weeks pregnant with Mikayla I was diagnosed with hypertension. By 32 weeks, this progressed to Mild Pre-Eclampsia. Every few days I had to get lab work done, and every day we feared it would be the day she came. At 35 weeks, it was clear that Mikayla needed to be born. We scheduled an induction, but the day before the induction I started having strong contractions. That night Mikayla was born, she was 4 weeks and 6 days early. If she had been one day earlier she would have had NICU staff present at delivery and would have gone immediately to the NICU. Because of that one day she was not considered a HIGH RISK preemie. Mikayla was a good size, so that was no concern. We noticed when she was 15 hours old that she was turning purple and when she breathed she sounded like a freight train. Due to "preemie laziness" she did not want to eat because she was so sleepy.

At 18 hours old Mikayla was admitted to the NICU. We had no prognosis until the following day when we learned that she had pneumonia. Over the next couple days she was on breathing machines, had feeding tubes, and had spinal taps. It was so sad and scary seeing her like that. One time we went in and I was devastated to see an IV line coming out of her scalp...all of her other veins had collapsed and it was the only place they could get it in. When she was about 10 days old she was finally able to start taking very small bottles, and about 12 days old we were allowed to try breastfeeding. At 2 weeks old Mikayla *graduated* from the NICU and that was my proudest moment with her, and I think probably one of the best days of my life.

Right now, as I type and watch my daughters play, I remember that every moment is a proud moment, but these are the ones the stick out in my mind.