Answered Prayers!

Six months ago, Janina's pediatrician, who also happens to be a Developmental Pediatrician suggested that she undergo a Developmental Assessment to find out which areas we would need to focus on in terms of therapy.  At that time, her scores showed that she was functioning like a 10month old child over-all and not like an 18month old.  Her weak areas were Hearing and Speech - particularly the Expressive side (where she was merely like a 6month old baby); the Eye-Hand Coordination (she hadn't had the syndactyly release yet); and on the Performance  Scales.  Because she scored low on 3 scales, the was considered to have Global Developmental Delay.  The pedia suggested that we go back to the Occupational Therapist so that the home activities created for us would focus more on developing her weaknesses.

The truth was, we were never able to go back to the OT.  First Janina had her hand surgery and the wounds needed to heal first.  Then we got busy, then the therapist got married and went on her honeymoon... and then it was time to go back for another assessment.

Imagine our surprise this morning when she got good scores on all scales except on the Hearing and Speech Scales!  Even her doctor was happy about it.

So although Janina understands our conversations with her, she really has difficulty in forming the sounds that would make her words audible.  She tries, and she tries very hard.  But to us, all her sounds come out the same.

The doctor says that it's possible that she may have Speech Apraxia - which according to Google is a motor speech disorder where children have problems saying sounds, syllables and words.  The muscles themselves are not the problem, its the area of the brain that tells the muscles how to move and what to do to make a particular sound or series of sounds that is either damaged or not fully developed.

When Janina was born and her sutures had not been opened up yet, we distinctly remember being told that from the MRI and CT Scans, it appeared that the portion of her brain that was compressed by the lack of space was the portion of the brain that affected speech.  That explains everything.

Of course, therapy will be next on our agenda and our Pedia referred us to someone whom she feels will be able to help Janina "learn" how to make the correct sounds.

For the meantime, we are still jubilant at her miraculous developmental growth.  I'm sure that will all the prayers coming her way, the Lord and Mama Mary listened and made sure that she would be a living testament to the healing powers of prayer.