Sometime in the week before April 25th, 2007, a doctor from Portland, Oregon, called to tell us that our baby, Abby Joy, would never hold her head up straight. Among other minor birth defects, she had a "hemivertebrae" in her neck, and so her sweet little head tipped unwaveringly to the left.
I remember the week because April 25th, 2007 was the day our 7 month old baby girl had open heart surgery. It's funny how one thing puts another in perspective. When the doctor called to give us the news about Abby's neck, we had bigger things on our mind. I wanted to see her alive at the end of the week, tilted head and all. By God's grace, Abby was alive at the end of the week, and doing great. That whole story is one for another post - suffice it to say that we were thrilled to have our "failure to thrive" baby rolling over, smiling, laughing, making eye contact and growing!!
Over the next two years, medical specialists helped us take care of Abby's birth defects one at a time: her heart fixed, an extra toe removed, a kidney monitored, and a "tethered spinal cord" loosened through surgery. Yet we kept getting the same information about her neck - "nothing we can do, that's her permanent resting place." She had eye problems as a result of the neck tilt, so we tried prism glasses, neck braces, physical therapy, occupational therapy. . . this mom was relentless in her quest to find solutions for her baby girl!
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