Hi, I’m Mary and I have a passion for connecting families in our area with resources that will benefit their children. My husband and I have been blessed with three beautiful daughters and never would have imagined the story we would be able to share through our own personal trials.
Recently I had the opportunity to talk about one of my FAVORITE organizations with Melissa Andrews on WTOL channel 11 news. So many times I talk with others about my passion when it comes to helping other mommas discover an avenue of help they have so longed for…it was nice to catapult my story for others to hear on a much larger scale.
I still remember the day like it was yesterday. We took our 18-month-old daughter to a behavioral pediatrician to see if she may be on the autism spectrum. She had been showing signs of having autism such as behavioral outbursts, a clingy disposition to myself, and she did strange things like make her bed every day and stack and re-stack books for hours. The knot in my stomach was too big to manage with tears ready and loaded as we waited in the waiting room to be called back. I was extremely nervous at how everything would turn out. It was a three hour test. My 18-month-old threw tantrums every 20 minutes, she wouldn’t allow anyone to…
This little 3.5 year old has been on quite the journey…and taken my husband and I on quite the journey as well. 💗
From an EXTREMELY young age (like 3 months) I knew Delise was unique and different from the “norm” (whatever the heck that means 🤷🏻♀️). Little did I know that she would transform my heart 💗 and help me to embrace her way of thinking, seeing the world, and loving life.
It took about 3 years for the two of us to truly “get” one another. I’m not speaking about loving one another…that came naturally for me as she is my precious gift from God. No, It was just, well…where I saw black and white, she sees a thousand different shades of gray.
Our family has been on a road that has taken us so many places and allowed us to meet so many people. Our girls were diagnosed with Hypotonia at a very young age. This just meant that their limbs were very “loose” and doing gross motor activities such as walking, running, jumping, riding a bike, keeping their balance, etc. came at a much slower pace than your average child. As a first time mommy and daddy, this news was awful (and I am well-aware our news could have been worse). We felt alone and unable to put together a plan that would best support our oldest daughter and her needs. A specialist doctor recommended Help Me Grow and I decided to give them a call. I was AMAZED at their professionalism, their quick response to my situation, and their support right from the beginning.
I was just getting home from a work trip and my husband says to me…
“Now don’t get too alarmed…I am sure it isn’t anything BUT…our daughter seems to be experiencing some sort of strange head jerks that she can’t control.”
Of course I flipped out and then quickly witnessed it for myself. It appeared to be a seizure to the untrained eye and with that, we rushed her to the hospital. They hooked her up to every machine, put an IV in her tiny little vein and the process began. She was just 8 months old and as new parents, we were not ready for this…like AT ALL.
When our daughter (Annora) was just 13 months old, I was out of town on a work blitz and my husband was holding down the fort with her. When I returned, he explained to me that she had been doing some strange head thrusts and he wasn’t quite sure what it was. I quickly grabbed our baby girl to embrace her. As I was holding her, sure enough she demonstrated the head thrusts my husband had just described. My heart sank! I couldn’t wrap my mind around what was going on and I did what any momma would do, I frantically called the pediatrician’s office. They directed us to go to the hospital where Annora was admitted for further testing. She was poked, proded, tested, retested, etc. and the tests came inconclusive. We were referred to a developmental pediatricianwho got to the bottom of our daughter’s ailments. She quickly realized that Annora suffered from hypotonia (low muscle tone) and that her iron levels were low as well. She referred us to a GI doctor for peds and also gave us the information for an organization called Help Me Grow.