Lucky Soda Photography – Iowa Wedding Photographers

We’ve recently started taking our daughter Lydia to a new set of therapists.  For those that don’t know, she was born via emergency c-section during the 8th month of pregnancy. She showed no signs of having any issues in the womb through those 8 months. Heart beat checked out fine and all was well with test results up until October 2nd of 2006. Then it was noticeable that Lydia wasn’t moving at all during fetal kick counts when she was normally active. We went in to the midwives the following morning and they could find no heartbeat.

Our hearts dropped.

We went across the street to the hospital where they had Lydia out within 2-3 minutes time. She wasn’t breathing on her own and her heart rate had slowed down to almost a third of what it should have been reading. Lydia was leaving us.

Through a miracle of God and the helping hands at Blank Children’s Hospital NICU, Lydia came home within 4 weeks of the c-section. Shocking the doctors that predicted a minimum 3 month stay. She also was tested for enlarged heart and brain abnormalities but they couldn’t find anything. They did find that the right side of Lydia’s brain showed “abnormal electrical activity”. We were told to, “expect delays”.

She will be turning four next month and we’ve been through a smattering of therapists. She is delayed. But she is doing very well. She is talking and interacting as a normal child does. She hugs and kisses and lets us know when she doesn’t like something. She also sings and dances and usually enjoys listening to the song, “Horchata” by Vampire Weekend. She scoots around and is so very close to crawling.

We have decided to try out a newer form of therapy. She travels out to Guthrie Center every Tuesday to go horse riding. Yes, that’s right – horse riding. Apparently, the spine moves in so many different directions that it stimulates the brain stem on a whole different level. Something that no exercises can duplicate.  So they give Lydia little activities to do at “stations” set up all along “Buffy’s” (the horse) path that she’ll better absorb due to this brain stem stimuli. I was indeed a little skeptical at first, but Lydia absolutely loves it. This has been her third trip out and we’ve already been noticing improvements. It is exciting to see our little girl progressing so well. Here are some photographs of a session she had this Tuesday.

These are just about as close to straight out of camera as it gets for us. So apologies for the color casts you might see in the images below.