Discouraged

While I am seeing tremendous progress for Camdyn in the area of speech, I still get discouraged often.  It happens when we are around other kids who are near her age.  We were at the park a few days ago and Camdyn wanted to swing.  I took her over to the swings and put her in the baby swing.  Swinging next to us in a big kid swing was a little girl who had just turned 2.  I know I shouldn't compare - blah, blah, blah- but it's just right there in front of me, and it's obvious - my daughter is far behind kids her age.  Her daddy doesn't see it.  He's not around any other 2 year olds besides the two that reside at our house.  He thinks they are doing great, and all things considered, they couldn't be doing better.  However, I am around other 2 year olds, and I hear them speaking in multiple word phrases and some even in sentences like the little girl that was swinging next to us.  Not only was she swinging in the big kid swing, she was talking like a big kid, "Mommy, I want to swing higher - push, push, push.  Wheee!"  Then I see my precious girl pointing and grunting "uhh, uhh, uhh" at the swing.  After I encourage her to say swing (mouthing SWING really big), she manages to say "seen" and I am so proud that she attempted the word and came pretty close, but I am also sad.  Why does it have to be so hard for her and so easy for this kid next to her?  I hope you all don't think I'm terrible for being so honest, but those of you who understand know how much it hurts.

She has developed a bigger vocabulary over the past few weeks.  She will attempt more words; however, very few of her words are complete words.  She says "ca" for cat, "do" for dog, "ba ba" for bottle/drink, "p" for up, etc.  I know it will come with time, but she will have to work harder than other children.  Our speech therapy MESS is still up in the air.  It looks like my insurance does not cover speech therapy, and the therapy office continued to let us come every week for nearly a year racking up a huge bill!  It really ticks me off more than I can write about here and still remain tactful. 

I am going to try to get a re-evaluation with our early childhood program for speech therapy for Camdyn.  I don't know if she will qualify or not or if I will even like the therapist they send us if she does qualify.  We haven't had the best luck with some of the therapists they have sent in the past.  I will probably still pay out-of-pocket for private therapy with the therapist she was seeing because I liked her a lot; I just don't like the stupid office staff that couldn't figure out we weren't covered even though they told us we were!  So, here we are two years down the road in our micro-preemie journey and while things are much, much better overall, there are still bumps in the road and hurdles to cross.