Millie started having seizures a couple days after she was born. She went from being a content peanut to screaming. After pushing the doctors because we knew something wasn't right, they did an ultrasound and found a brain bleed. Within hours she was on a jet plane to a Children's Hospital in Minneapolis, MN. A brain bleed causes brain damage, but with such a young brain the odds were in our favor for other parts of the brain to take over to compensate for the damaged parts. Any help we could get for her just made sense and the specialists kept telling us, "The earlier the better." We really didn't know the extent of her issues when we first contacted Easter Seals, but they were so supportive in leading us in the right direction.
We have an older child with significant needs from a chromosome deletion, so we were already familiar with early intervention. I remembered dealing with some very sweet people associated with Easter Seals, so starting with them seemed like an easy decision. It was hard to admit something might be "wrong" with our child, but we knew the sooner we addressed it the better the odds of helping her in the long run. It was emotional for us to need these services again, but we had to put our personal struggle with denial and heartbreak aside in order to be proactive and do what we knew was best for our little gal. I didn't want to have any regrets about what I could've done to help her. We were determined to give her every opportunity to succeed.
We had a lot of fears and signs of delays when we had our first evaluations with the EI and subsequent therapists. Millie had spent almost two months in the hospital with a hydrocephalus diagnosis. Neurosurgeons said she'd likely have some degree of CP, but only time would tell and getting her the most help possible as quickly as possible was the key. Today, Millie is now walking and talking. In this journey she's had an early interventionist, physical therapists, occupational therapists and speech therapists.
We just moved to SC after we left the hospital in MN with Millie. I had never even been to Florence and was totally overwhelmed with starting her care here. Our EI's were so kind and efficient to get us connected with the therapies and any other services Millie needed. The Early Intervention team did a great job to not only help us move forward with small, reachable developmental steps, but also whatever else we needed from medical connections to much needed social outlets.
We're not rookie parents as Millie is our fourth and we already have another with special needs, but it has still been a serious lifesaver to have so many others on our team fighting for our girl and helping us take each next step in her care. Caregiving can be exhausting and just knowing we are not alone is a blessing that is difficult to put into words. We are so grateful for everything Easter Seals has done for us!
