We all have times where we start to notice difference in our children's development. Since i have only the 1 i had nothing to compare her too so i struggled on, but by the time she was 20months i knew there was a problem, she just wasn't talking and even the few words she had, like mam, dad, she just stopped saying them so i knew this wasn't normal, so off i took her to my local Health Nurse and explained my worries, now she is a nice woman and gave me advice to go and buy the LADY BIRD learning books and read to butterfly for 20mins a day. I told her that butterfly hates when people read and will walk out of the room to even closing doors behind her and what would i do if this happened. The Health Nurse told me to carry on reading as if nothing happened and read out very loud if this happens, and then come back in 3 months. So off i go into Waterstones and buy these little books, i still cant believe how gullible i was and i though that this would work because the professional told me it would, i can laugh at myself now for even thinking of it but I'm a very optimistic person and always hope for the best.
Fast forward 3 months of me doing this and no change except now i have a very frustrated mommy and little girl so off we go back to the Health nurse where i explained that it didn't work and not once did she stay in the room as i read. So The health nurse took some notes and said she`d refer me to see some 1, i remember this ladies name but for the life of me i don't know what she does. She tells me that there is this new thing after being set up in cork, once a month a team of specialist would meet, 1 person from COPE, 1 from ENABLE IRELAND, 1 from AUTISM IRELAND & 1 from EARLY INTERVENTION. These people would meet once a month and look at all the cases and pick up which ever they would find would best suit the person with the services. So in Sept `08 we received a letter from COPE to say that they picked up our case and an assessment would begin in Oct & Nov. Now by this time i was starting to think of Autism, i don't know why as before my daughters diagnoses i never knew anyone who has autism. Think its mothers intuition. Anyhow back to my blog. Halfway through the assessments after butterfly had seen a phsycologist, my social worker came to my house and told us that from that report Butterfly had signs for Autism so they were stopping there assessment and referring us back to the new forum so AUTISM IRELAND would pick up the case. and in Jan `09 i got a letter giving us appointments for the Autism assessment for the month of march.
During the whole assessment, butterfly was as good as gold, didn't once have a tantrum and tried really hard with things, so i really be lived at that time they would tell us she didn't have autism. The 1st week we were with a SPEECH AND LANGUAGE THERAPIST, 2ND week an OCCUPATIONAL THERAPIST, 3rd week we had a meeting with just us parents and a women asking lots of Q`s and then the 4th week myself and hubby went in for another meeting on the 31st March `09 which we were told butterfly`s diagnoses.
So here i am 1 year later and in a good place, i know there will be bad days and good days to come but am so grateful to my Daughter, who makes me smile everyday, my husband for his support, even though we kill each other most days but hey that's marriage and ours is going great, my own family and last but not least the moms iv met through Facebook. Now there is a bunch of AMAZING MOMS EVER xx
