Physical Therapy Evaluation

All of us were taken back into a large room for Julian's evaluations. We all sat on the floor around a small space as the doctor began her testing. The room was very large and there were many things to help with physical therapy in the room. Things like balance beams and swings for older children to small toys with lots of lights and sounds for younger children. The room was decorated for kids. Bright colors and lots of things to play on. It was hard to imagine how many kids had come thru those doors that were like Julian.

As I sat near Julian I thought about what he had gone thru to get here. As I leaned over and grabbed his little hand I asked God why? Why does this happen to children? Before I could start in on God about how he could let children be hurt...and trust me I would have started in on him! I heard the doctors voice and knew I needed soak in every word the doctor said. I watched as she tried to get Julian to move in different directions and even tried to get him to smile or just grab at a toy. He wouldn't do anything she tried to get him to do. He still wasn't making eye contact and there were a few times when other children in the room got loud and he would flinch at the noise. It was heartbreaking to watch him go thru this, he just laid there on his back with no emotions. I wasn't afraid that we couldn't help him or that making the decision to keep was going to be taking on to much for us. But I found myself wondering again...why and how this could happen to this precious child...and I thought about it many times during that evaluation.

At the end of the evaluation we were told that he would need physical therapy once a week. He would be seen by the same physical therapist every time so she could monitor his progress. We agreed to make all the appointments. Every Wednesday at 3 we would meet with the physical therapist. At first the therapy would consist of getting Julian to lift his head while on his tummy and to roll over from tummy to back and then from back to tummy. These were all things he should have started to at least try doing at 2-3 months of age.

When the appointment was over the doctor had left us all there sitting around Julian. As I looked at him on the floor I just wanted to scoop him up and take him home that day but I knew that wasn't possible. Leyla looked at us one last time and said to us....Are you sure you want to do this? As my husband and I made eye contact we both smiled at her and said...Absolutely when can we take him home?

There was paper work that had to be done so we would pick him up after the weekend. I was a little relieved because I was going to see my girlfriend over the weekend and I wanted to share everything with her about Julian. So if we couldn't pick him up until Monday I could still go on my trip! We left that day without him in our car, I thought it was going to be hard to not take him home that day but the truth was we knew we had to get many things before he came home with us....formula, clothes, diapers! All the things we hadn't gotten because we didn't know how old the baby was going to be.

As we jumped in the car I said....we need diapers...AND CLOTHES..and we were both glowing! We were off to shop in the baby isle! I couldn't wait to get everything our son would need to feel right at home on Monday...in four days we were bringing our first child home!