I suppose those who may be reading, know Becca pretty well. I just sort of "introduced" her to a friend and it turned out well. I'm posting it here to help remind myself lest I should find myself mired in the day to day and forget how very, very lucky we are to have her in our family!Becca has quite a bit of brain damage brought to us courtesy of a nasty virus called Cytomegalovirus. We contracted it while I was pregnant and against all foreseeable odds, ended up with quite a few affects from it. Becca has Cerebral palsy that has her arms and legs tight and her torso and neck floppy. She doesn't sit, stand, walk, crawl or anything without lots of support and someone else doing a lot of the work. She is Deafblind which for us means that she has severe loss in her right ear (we don't even aid that one anymore) and a mild to moderate loss in her left (that we do aid) and we don't know where her vision is because she doesn't look right at anything for long enough to tell and she can't tell us herself. She is nonverbal and still cries when she's upset or to get attention.
Becca's personality is very sweet. She loves to be loved, cuddled, talked to, sung to, read to, interacted with. We can get her giggling uncontrollably by tickling her ribs or blowing on her face. We see things in her eyes that tell us there is more in there than we may ever get to know, given her physical limitations, but it is there nonetheless! She remembers people and recognizes her helpers and teachers and gives them smiles and happy body language. So, even though on paper all that stuff in the first paragraph are the things that some people see first, she really gets to shine once people really get to know the real her. We had an experience with the playgroup they do for 2 year olds until they transition to preschool at 3 where I heard through the grapevine that they weren't sure if it was right for her, to put it nicely. I asked that we get to go once and I would stay with her (Me and the baby I was expecting! :) ) and see what happened. After they met her, they were more than okay with her coming and got such a thrill when they were able to get her to smile, etc.
Becca makes friends wherever she goes and they all love to help take care of her. Our aide this year had to start a list and let 2 at a time be her helpers for the day because everyone wanted to help all the time! You just have to keep on loving them and doing what you can and when you add preschool teachers and school teachers and aides and everyone that comes along with them to your list of helpers, just think of them as taking some of the therapy onto themselves and you get to be more of the caregiver and snuggler and they get to do more of the hard work. You will reinforce what they do, but it's not totally up to you anymore.
That being said, there will still be a lot of things you have to fight for or stand up for, but our little angels are worth it!
