Last night as I lay in bed and as Olivia went to sleep her tiny little fingers wrapped around my finger and played with it. This doesn’t seem like a big deal but for Olivia it is.
When Olivia was first born I couldn’t hold her because she was hooked up to machines in the NICU, but I was rolled up in my hospital bed next to her, so I could touch her. The first thing she did was grab a hold of my finger. Looking back, it’s amazing that was my first interaction with my daughter. One of the traits of Olivia and Wolf Hirschhorn Syndrome is that she doesn’t use her hands. She uses her feet to touch her toys, her feet to push things away, her feet for everything.
With therapy and time, Olivia is slowly beginning to use her hands. All her therapists work on it on a daily basis. Seeing her put a block in a puzzle board or grabbing monkeys off of a sticky pad or selecting what she wants off of a Go Talk board makes me stop and stare. What most kids do without a single thought Olivia has to work hard for. Her brain doesn’t tell her hands what to do. It’s taken months for those connections to be made so when you see her doing things like grabbing on to a puzzle piece it really makes you appreciate what is going on.
As I lay there last night as she played with my finger I appreciated every moment. What a long way she has come. What an amazing little girl.