The Beginning

I remember when Fox was 9 months old, telling my mom that he still seemed very babyish to me. That was the only way I could describe it. He had hit the milestones he was supposed to at the time - was rolling over, sitting up unassisted, etc. - but something just wasn't quite right and I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was. My mom assured me that it was just because I was used to having his sister Romy, who is 21 months older, and was running at 10.5 months. She has always been very physical, even more so than oldest sister Quincy, and perhaps I was just comparing them too much. And he was bald. She said that if he had any hair he would seem older, which made a lot of sense. I put it all out of my mind and just assured myself that she was right. At his 12 month doctor's appointment the doctor went down the checklist of milestones with me... Is he pointing? No. Does he say any words? No. Does he babble? No. Walk? No. She was a little bit concerned but gave me some helpful suggestions of things to try with him and told me to come back in 6 weeks to see how he was doing. I brought him back at the end of October and there had been no progress. She told me during those 6 weeks to touch his foot a million times a day and say "Foot! There's your foot!" - which I did. A ton. She said after a few weeks when I said "Where's your foot?" he should grab for it or raise it or at least look down for it. He didn't. She referred us to Early Intervention to get an evaluation, saying that he may or may not qualify, it was about a 50/50 chance. The Early Intervention team came out at the beginning of December and spent a few hours with him to evaluate. In order to qualify for services you need to have at least a 33% delay in one area or a 25% delay in two areas - the six areas being gross motor skills, fine motor skills, communication, adaptive (self-help), cognitive, social/emotional. He qualified in every. single. area. The therapists told me that his emotional development was at a 5-8 month old level - keep in mind he was 15 months old at the time. Needless to say I was totally and completely devastated. I knew that he had some delays but I had no idea that they were so severe. The next few weeks were a bit of a blur, realizing just exactly what was in store. I took him to get a hearing evaluation with a specialist which came out normal, took him to an autism clinic that told me he was too young to diagnose, got him on a waiting list for a developmental pediatrician (9-12 month wait, how awful is that?!) and got him an appointment with a neurologist (again, 6 month wait). Early Intervention started in January with an occupational therapist coming once a week and a special education teacher coming once a week to start. He did finally start walking at 15.5/16 months and is doing great with that now, but the other areas haven't seen much improvement even with the therapies he has been getting. The journey so far has been scary, sad, isolating, frustrating and just overall stressful. All this waiting for answers is extremely hard. I've started this blog to keep our friends and family posted on how Fox is doing, but also to hopefully help and connect with other people that are on similar journeys.

                                              Fox Edward Winchester James - 15 months

xo Betsy