Celebrating 11 Months of LIFE!

For the record, when we brought Abraham home in early June, he could barely hold his head up. His 6-month-old body behaved much like a newborn's. For orphanage life, he got great care, but it was still orphanage life. In the following weeks and months, we saw HUGE strides in him as we worked to bridge the gap between "developmentally appropriate" and reality.

At his last doctor appointment a couple of months ago, our doctor wouldn't sign off on his post-placement medical evaluation without penning in "developmentally delayed." I tried to advocate for Abraham by reminding our doctor that we have good reason to believe that he was born prematurely, that he was severely malnourished, and that he spent the first 6 months of his life in an orphanage. Let's set aside the milestone charts for a second and remember where he's been. He's come so far! I really wanted our doctor to acknowledge Abraham's improvement. But, no dice. The doctor reasoned that, all those things considered, he'd still say Abraham was delayed. That was a discouraging week, but it made me and Adam talk some things out...ugly things in our heart. 

We had wanted our child to be perceived in a certain way. After that week, we came to terms with something. Abraham's normal is different than most other kids' normal.  That's OK. If someone wants to label him "developmentally delayed," that doesn't change who he is, or who he will be in the future.  We decided to forget what the specialists were saying and hold onto what we knew about our son.  We would love Abraham for Abraham. Period.

Over the past month, miracles have happened again in his body. He's learned to eat food (even foods with texture!). His army-crawlinghas evolved to hands-and-knees crawling. He's showing us problem-solving skills and taking a genuine interest in the world around him.  His language has exploded, flooring us with his attention to our sounds. He's made a handful of our words his own.

During physical therapy this week, we realized that there's no longer much of a gap between Abraham and those pesky developmental milestone charts we've been purposefully ignoring these past months. 

Which is a great lesson.  Normal is different.  Progress is not always easily measured.  Love is what counts.