Speechless......

I found a batch of ultrasound pictures on a disk last week of Laura........When i came across this one I sat at my desk speechless and in tears......For those of you who know Lauras story and have read the previous blogs you may see it right away..... LAURA IS SMILING! Her same contageous heart tweaking smile!!!!!! Even though you cant see her eyes like we see them now,  she still manages to capture my own gaze and not let go....just as she does now!!!

The first thing i will never forget the doctors told us....she may not even smile....

One smile at a time......

When Laura was about 8 months old she had an EEG done. It is a test that measures brain activity….Everything turned out NORMAL!?…normal brain activity……I was confused as she wasn't doing the things my other children did at her age.…..Im not one to compare in great detail what each of my children are doing at a similar age….all children learn things at a different pace …..i don't think that the timing in which they accomplish those milestones determines their level of intelligence ….BUT because of everything we were told when I was pregnant I was paranoid …...At this point Laura wasn't rolling…trying to sit ….holding toys….lifting her head off the ground when on her tummy ect ect ….The outcome of all the appointments before she was born were negative but now all the results were positive yet she wasn't moving around or making many sounds….WHAT THE HECK! …..

Our last major appointment with the Neurologist was when Laura was 10months old….. after a thorough examination she said “it looks like Cerebral Palsy”…..With technology today you would think we could get past the words “LOOKS, SEEMS, POSSIBLY, COULD BE….ECT ECT ECT ECT ETC !!” (To this day we still don’t have anything definite)….she referred us to the Child Development Centre where we have been working closely with an Occupational therapist, physical therapist and recently a speech therapist ever since.

                                 Laura in one of her first cool supportive chairs from her therapy team :)) 

 The left side of Laura's body is more dominant than her right… Laura’s a lefty J…. (which makes sense looking back to when the doctors said a piece of her brain on the right side is missing) .....Over the past two years she has come a long way....she has slowly learned how to hold herself up in an almost crawl position and keep her head up ....each time keeping it up longer and longer....

                                 

she can sit independently , legs crossed and hands placed flat on the floor in front of her for close to 10 mins…..

she can skooch around on her tummy and get almost anywhere her determined little heart will take her.......

…..within the past 6 months Laura has learned how to give HUGS EEEEEEEEEEP!!!! I think sometimes we give hugs without realising just how much love a person can receive from one....... For Laura , since she can’t speak, I believe its her way of saying “I love you” ….Everything about Laura teaches our family to value the little things….. Especially the ability to love through a simple embrace....... 

Another HUGE milestone for her was two weeks ago….. her PT gave her this walker below to try out at home….

Laura took TWO steps!!!!!!!!!!!! For those of you who have children  you know how it feels ........ arms stretched wide saying the words “come on…come to mommy…” and when they reach you the joy that fills you right to the soul!! Well multiply that by a hundred!! LOL My heart was doing flips !!! JIm not sure what made my heart burst more …the “MOM I DID IT” in her eyes or her grabbing my hand as she reached me… J

We have sooo many extraordinary moments ...…but there are also our moments when things get so incredibly frustrating....... I have been teaching Laura some simple sign language……but a lot of the signs require you to use both your hands….even the simplest words are sometimes a challenge for her since she doesn't have a lot of control in her right arm…..I find myself having to guess what she wants when she makes the noises that mean she would like something…..”Do you want this? Do you want that?”  .......Anything and everything that requires only a yes or no answer …….but her yes and no nods aren’t always so clear….…..We have many moments in the midst of this that both of us are bawling ….Laura trying so hard to get her point across and me trying so hard to understand her so that she can have whatever it is that she so desperatly wants..…..sometimes I end up having to find something to distract her from what she was wanting in the first place…..I feel horrible about it but if I cant figure it out its better to do that than have her getting overly stressed and upset…… The lack of communication we have with eachother has got to be one of the most trying situations we have had to deal with....... BUT......THANKFULLY those moments are slowly going to fade . Lauras speech therapist has come to the rescue and has started to introduce Laura to some AMAZING technology that will help her say the words that are all stored inside……My little smarty pants is quickly getting the hang of it too !!! and with that persistant determination we see so frequently in her , she will be chatting up a storm in no time.......me on the other hand will be bawling up a storm!!! Can't WAIT to hear all she has to say!!! over and over and OVER!! :) 

Laura's achievements by far out weigh the rough moments....and when i find myself broken and frustrated for her she reminds me with a simple smile.....A LAURA SMILE...It's HER body that doesn't allow her to do what she wants to and yet shes the happiest of us all.......She has already taught our family sooooo much ......More than anything its to cherish and celebrate the little things in life.......and when you have a mountain to climb........conquer it.... one smile at a time....... 

Our first glimpse of Miracles.....

This is a similar picture of what the doctors showed us of Lauras brain….

the neurologist said, ”she has Schizencephaly and quite possibly Septo Optyic Displaysia…..meaning she has a piece of her brain missing….in her case on the right side…..she will more than likely be blind and will have seizures……and have severely delayed mobility....possibly even mentally handicapped....”  It seemed that with every appointment the prognosis seemed to get worse and worse…..

I remember our drives home from the hospital would be spent in total shock and at a loss for words...….i can’t speak for kev but for me, inside I was screaming and my heart was burning…..I was scared for Laura….scared for what this would mean for my family…..for Isaac and Kayla…..worried about how I would split up my time for each of them in a fair way….worried that Isaac being the oldest would somehow get lost in whatever was to come of my “time” ……another great worry was thinking of how people would judge me.....judge Laura……at this point by what the doctors told me of what Laura could be I had this sad image in my mind of what her outward appearance would look like….so I was scared of people judging her by that ….also any attention directed my way makes me want to crawl under a rock and hide …..so I knew that would also be hard.

As my due date came closer the doctors seem to become more concerned (which freaked me out even more :S) … Both the doctors and my midwife thought it would be best if I delivered Laura at Children's as they were expecting complications.  My labours with Isaac and Mikayla were fast…..i had Kayla within 20min of arriving at the hospital sooooooo in order to make sure I got to children's on time they wanted to induce me about a week before my due date.

After 5 months of worry….tears….and feeling like my heart would pop out of my chest…. the day to have Laura had arrived…..the one good thing (HEAVY ON THE “ONE” ) out of being induced is that you can have everything planned  ….I LIKE TO BE PREPARED!!! So this part turned out in my favour lol My other two monkeys were settled in with good friends for a couple days and we were off……..

So here I am, MISS IMPATIENT…..waiting for the inducing to kick in….10 hrs LATER!!! about 3 hrs of light contractions then from 12- till the moment Laura was born it was haaaard labour ….like felt she was going to be born out of my lower back labour……but quite honestly I was more anxious than anything else…..over the past 5 months my heart had been praying like mad about the plan for her life and I just wanted to get it started!.....

FINALLY 4:20AM Laura Li Kew was born (I know some of you are thinking 4 hrs of hard labour huh? But for me this was longer than the other two waaaaaay longer ) …..I must say right now I am sooooooooooooooo THANKFUL for my midwife …if it wasn't for her STRONG personality a lot of things would have gone ALOT differently……like holding Laura the moment she was born…they wanted to whisk her away for testing BUT Vera insisted that Laura have time with me since my beautiful girl showed NO signs of stress or complications ) AMEN!

Here's a picture of my sweet SMILEY baby girl about 10mins after being born ... I must add that another thing the doctors said was that she may not even smile…….mega tears just thinking back on this moment SMILES from day one and she has NEVER stopped…even if she is sad or frustrated you can ALWAYS get an instant smile out of her....

After what seemed like only minutes Laura was whisked away to the ICU for a check up and a series of tests.... We got to go up a short while later to see her BUT what i missed the most was having her snuggle in close for our first sleep together.....Laura had to stay in the ICU ...they said her blood sugars were really low....and needed to make sure she didn't have any seizures AHHHHHHH!!!!! ...

Here's my sweet baby girl NOT too happy in ICU.....

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5 1/2 hrs later i said goodbye to Laura and headed home....for anyone who has ever had to leave their newborn at the hospital you understand how incredibly hard this is!!!! There are no words to express how painful that is....leaving a piece of your heart behind....and knowing that she wasn't going to be cuddled like i would cuddle her.....loved with the same kind of love that she would get if she was in my arms....a part of my heart felt hollow.....At this time in our lives i didn't drive, Kev had to work,  and i needed to be there for my other two monkeys.....so as much as i wanted to be there with her ALL the time i couldn't.....we went back in the evenings so i could feed her...sometimes as a family 

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sometimes just me and a family friend....but each time i had to leave my baby behind....and each time the doctors had no reason to keep her there other than "her blood sugars are slightly low"....there were NO signs that anything else was wrong....she ate fine...she looked fine ect ect ect NOTHING like what they had predicted....and NO reason to keep her there....Once again THANK YOU for my STRONG personality midwife who basically told the doctors my baby needed to be with me and they had no reason to keep her any longer! I had the same group of midwives for all three of my kids and each time they were even more amazing!  

FINALLY after a week and a bit Laura was coming home! We still didn't know what the future held for her nor did we have anything positive regarding her prognosis.... BUT we did have our first set of miracles....starting with a smile......... 

Laura Li ........

Elisha was the name we had in mind before the name Laura was “given” to us…….

As Kev and I were waiting to hear the results of our second ultrasound we looked over the name plates on the walls of Children’s hospital……all of a sudden Laura popped out at us…..we looked at eachother and instantly felt that Laura was to replace the Elisha WE had chosen…..we were pondering on ideas for a middle name when my dear friend, Daphne popped into my head…..I text her to ask what her chinese name was……she text back Li Mei…..i played around with it in my head for a bit and thought Laura Li (pronounced Lee) sounded perfect!!!.......

At this point all we had known was that the doctor was concerned about the results of the initial ultrasound…..They called us back into the room which now included a neurologist and some other kind of long word name that remains fuzzy in my memory……to this day the only words I remember from that half of the appointment are “part of her brain is missing……….”  As I write them now tears well up and that same huge lump in my throat returns…….the first things that filled my negative mind was “what have I done to my baby?” …….i was feeling incredibly guilty for being saddened the moment I saw the + on the pregnancy test not knowing how I was going to do it with three so close in age…..like somehow  thinking that way did this to her…..

In the second half of the appointment they discussed what “part of her brain is missing” would mean for Laura…….Again just certain phrases fill my memory not details…..”it is very likely she will be blind….wont be able to walk….talk……or do anything for herself……..”  and then the words that left me leaving that hospital totally stunned and speechless …..”you have the option and right to terminate this pregnancy” ……Anyone else look at that line like its written in some foreign language? There isn’t one letter of it that I understand ……Even though I had struggled with thoughts of how challenging it would be juggling three little ones so close in age, I loved this baby! …..whole brain or half a brain she was still ours and I knew that if this was part of the plan for her life then there was a reason for it……

When choosing the names for our children, the meanings were always really important to me, but with everything that transpired in our appointments that day, I had forgotten to look up our new name for "Elisha"..... I couldn't have asked for a better way to finish off what was one of the most emotional days of my life……Laura means VICTORIOUS, HEROIC and the chinese meaning of Li is STRENGTH …..that was the very moment that every ounce of me KNEW that Laura was going to do GREAT things, no matter what challenges lay ahead of her……I truly believe God handpicks every name for our children, but this time it was as though he wrote it on a piece of paper and handed it to us……it was just that clear……