So what is Apraxia anyway? WHAT IS APRAXIA? Apraxia is a motor-planning disorder where the brain has a hard time coordinating muscle movements. Apraxia can be verbal, impacting an individual's ability to speak, or global, which impacts all physical movement. It does not impact an individual's ability to THINK or to UNDERSTAND, but does impact their ability to coordinate movement. WHAT CAUSES APRAXIA? Apraxia can be acquired by a brain injury, such as an accident or a stroke, or can be congenital, meaning present from birth. Childhood apraxia of speech is congenital and the specific cause is unknown. WHAT ARE SOME SIGNS/SYMPTOMS OF APRAXIA? Signs in a very young child: - Does not coo or babble as an infant - First words are late, and they may be missing sounds - Only a few different consonant and vowel sounds - Problems combining sounds; may show long pauses between sounds - Simplifies words by replacing difficult sounds with easier ones or by deleting difficult sou...
Before I had my son I thought that parenthood was rainbows and butterflies and not really all that "hard." I had babysat many times growing up and that wasn't hard, so I had this Parenting thing in the bag. Or so I thought. 😉 Most of my pregnancy was easy, until the end. I was a week and a half late. My blood pressure was high and the doctors told me I was measuring "a little big." I wasn't dilating at all. We decided to do a scheduled C-section for a couple reasons. The main reason being they thought my son might be on the bigger side and they didn't want to risk breaking his clavicle when he came out, if by some chance I could even pass his shoulders. I was ready to do this. We got to the hospital at midnight the night before my C-section. My husband likes to describe it like this, "It was like checking into a hotel! We had this nice big room and we got to watch TV and relax." He later fell sound asleep and slept the entire night through. ...