Faith's Mom's Blog

Coping with the News that Your Child has Special Needs

Adaptive Toys for Special Needs Children

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

In the waiting room, at pediatric therapy, I am known as Faith's mom. Just as others are known as Ashley's grandma, Luke's grandma, Chloe's mom, Abby's caretaker. At first, we were just a familiar face to one another. But as our children and grandchildren came for therapy more and more, we began to talk. We compared stories. We asked each other questions. Our waiting time has now become social hour. We have become our own little community - supporting one another, offering prayers and talking to those who know exactly what we go through. It's not just the parents, grandparents and caretakers who share a special connection with one another. It's also the three receptionists who sit behind the desks. Some children, like Faith, have been going to therapy for years. They know our backgrounds, they know when we aren't feeling well and most of all they know and understand our children. They laugh at the children's stories and they cry too when one of the

We had a small miracle occur in our household last night. Faith slept in her own bed until 6:30 in the morning. She woke up and I got her back to bed and she slept another couple of hours before I had to wake her for school. This morning I felt so well-rested that I didn't feel the need to sleep while Faith attended school. Last week, that's exactly what I did. After seeing another doctor, actually a cardiologist, I found out my O2 saturation was down to 87% and I had pneumonitis . I was having major shortness of breath so I was concerned there was something going on with my heart. He told me to finish my antibiotics and get lots of rest. He also said it wouldn't be a good idea to walk Faith to school and back home. Thankfully, we were able to get someone from respite care to bring her to school and back. And while she was in school, I slept. On Friday Faith stayed home from school because she was coming down with a cold but we had respite care from 1-5 p.m. - I slept mos

Thankfully, during these past six years it has been very rare that I've been too sick to look after Faith. But these past couple of weeks, though I have still been able to look after her - with the help of dad and respite care - it has been a challenge. It all started with a cough then my sinuses began to ache. After being diagnosed with a sinus infection I was put on antibiotics. I asked the doctor for something for my cough and he was going to prescribe some cough syrup that would knock me out as well as soothe my cough. I told him I didn't want that because I needed to be up at night with my daughter. So he prescribed these little pearl-like pills. Needless to say, they did not do the trick and I am still coughing. The hardest thing through this whole ordeal has been the lack of appetite and not having a lot of energy. It really did take all I could muster to walk Faith to school and back, after which I would go into a coughing frenzy, sometimes to the point of dry-heavi

I opened it with curiosity . Faith's name along with our address were on the outside of the envelope with a first name scrawled in the left-hand corner. I smiled as I read the contents. It was Faith's first invitation to a party. As I looked at the time and date of the party I felt almost relieved that we would have a good excuse for Faith not to attend. The Halloween party was scheduled for October 25 th - the same day Faith would be having her birthday party. Sure I was excited about Faith being invited to a party by one of her classmates. But it also caused a little anxiety wondering how the details were going to be worked out. How handicapped accessible was their home? If there were going to be lots of kids attending, how would Faith handle all the noise? Was the Halloween party going to be too scary for her? Well, not to worry because Faith wouldn't be going anyway. A few days later, before I had gotten a chance to call Faith's classmate's mother to tell h