Before and Now

I used to wonder why my little darling cry in the middle of the night. Superstitious advice is that she is scared of something. But what? I never found that out. Being Christians, we brought her for praying over by priests and pastors, but her screaming and crying persists. All I can remember is, how I often lost my temper, when she cried non-stop and nothing can soothe her. My little darling will scream and cry until she is too tired and fell asleep.(which is a few hours later) By that time, its usually time for me to get up and prepare for work. With only 2-3 hours of sleep at night, my patience runs low day by day. Still, we did not notice anything amiss. In the morning, my little darling is active, naughty and babbling. The drawback? She is not walking independently, even at 15 months, yet she started walking by holding on to furniture, walls, and pushing chairs before 1 year. we thought she was just too scared to venture out on her own. She started walking AND running on the same day. And I went into labour on the same night.

At 18 months, with the birth of her little brother, I was too busy to notice anything until my mom in law commented that Joy is rather quiet. That was a warning. I started observing and not happy with what I saw. Dr. Google did nothing to ease my feelings of unease. In denial, I did nothing until the end of the year.

As soon as we got the diagnosis, we launched into war. A war against the unknown. Whatever it is that is taking over my little darling. I had a nightmare of a year I never wanted to repeat. The tears, the sleepless nights, the hours surfing the internet, the hours poring into books and research, the time spent on trials and error teaching methods, and trying to convince family members to co operate in our early intervention programs, not to mention the money involved in all this.

I am thankful, in a way, that I've managed to pull through and be stronger.

Joy is now a joy to be around. We learnt to understand her nonverbal signs and greatly reduced her screaming and crying. She is in preschool and doing great socially. In fact, her teachers even told me that she is just like any typical kid except that she is not verbal.