First Ever E-Magazine | December 2011 | www ... - Oshwal Centre

Global Developmental DelayOur daughter was born at 38 weeks and s eemedto be d eveloping normally. Some of hermilestones were late for example, she sat at 9months, started walking (rather clumsily) at 17 monthsand was only able to say a few words. She had a goodpencil grip but could not switch on a light with one finger.She fell all the time. She could not walk up and downstairs the normal way i.e, one f oot at a time. She keptdropping things. These are just some examples.Comments like ‘she’s the middle child, so would talklater’, ‘you are a paranoid mother’, ‘it’s the nappy thatmakes her walk like that’, from the professional bodies,delayed our reactions to accepting that something wasamiss.Nevertheless, having suspected something was wrong,we pushed the health visitor to assess her at home for aperiod of 2 hour s after which a c onclusion was reachedthat something was indeed wrong. A t this stage, we asparents were still in denial about her issues, partlybecause we didn’t really appreciate the extent of herdifficulties, the need for a ‘ typical’ child and the lack ofany conclusive evidence by the health professionals.Soon after we went on holiday to Canada where a familyGP suggested we should get an opinion from adevelopmental paediatrician. Following an assessment,he diagnosed her as ‘hypotonic’ (low muscle tone), withspeech and language delay.This hit home hard! To some extent we started goingthrough a grieving process of denial, anger, mourning butnot yet acceptance.Back home, we approached the NHS for help anddirection. We saw a community paediatrician,occupational therapist (OT) and speech therapist (ST).The help and processes frustrated us greatly withirregular provisions, lack of a MDT approach and no realanswers. In order to get things moving quickly, wedecided to give our daughter regular private OT and ST.Our daughter was now 2 yrs old and we started noticingbehavioural problems. These stemmed from her lack ofcommunication skills and our inability to understand herfurther exasperated by her lack of fine and gr oss motorskills.Oshwal News E-Magazine of the O.A.U.K. 20 December 2011 Edition