A Glorious Day & a Refreshing Perspective

Many of you know about our speech therapy frustrations.

We've had an Early Intervention SLP (who is also a feeding specialist) evaluate Maryn a few times, but the results were always the same. She wasn't overly concerned about her issues, would suggest a few things and come back 6 months later for another eval. We were determined to get more consistent speech/swallowing therapy shortly after Maryn turned one, but it was difficult enough juggling two weekly therapist appointments (PT & OT) amongst everything else while temporarily living in another county. We decided we'd wait until we were back in our house.

Yeah, we moved back almost 3 months ago. After about a month of the previous SLP not returning my calls and another month of phone tag with our coordinator we were finally able to schedule anther SLP. She came today. Her name is Karen. She is pro-active, and I just loved her!

Unfortunately she lives quite a distance away and therefore won't be the specialist who works with Maryn weekly, but she must have said five times over the course of her 1.5 hour evaluation, "Don't worry, I'm going to get someone in here to help you." She's recommending weekly ST, with 1/2 the session focused on feeding and 1/2 focused on speech. She wants us to try another nipple for her bottles and work with some different cups. She's recommending another hearing test (the last one was when she was an infant) which we'll be able to set up through Easter Seals. She's recommending the nutritionist come out again, to reevaluate the situation now that she's made some progress with table food. She thought it couldn't hurt to have an evaluation by a developmental therapist (the last one was at 3 months of age) to make sure other things aren't missed.

In my mind she fits right in with Maryn's current therapy team. They are professional, skilled, knowledgeable, pro-active educators who see how all the pieces fit together and we are so thankful for their unique and holistic perspectives.