We have been home and working on getting life back in order and beginning the preparations for Molly's surgery. We have scheduled her surgery for May 31st. In some ways that seems like it is right around the corner and in others it doesn't feel like soon enough. She is so active these days and is learning new tricks everyday. This morning for the first time she transitioned from her belly to sitting all by herself - a big feat!
She is rocking onto her hips and putting pressure on the bottom of her foot - YIKES! Now that we know how bowed her bones really are I feel like she is a little ticking time bomb. It has been weighing so heavily on me that I am thinking of calling the surgeon to make sure we should wait another 2.5 months.
We also arrived home to a new reason to be anxious. In our mail was a hand-delivered letter from Wake County Human Services. I opened it up to find a memo from a social worker. Our name was not on the note, but it stated that our "child/children" had been reported to Child Protective Services. We slept OK on Tuesday night because we convinced ourselves that it must be a mistake or a misinterpretation on our part. Wednesday afternoon the social worker called back and told us that someone had called in a report. We arranged to have the social worker come the next day to discuss the report. She couldn't tell us anything over the phone, so we were left guessing about what we had been accused of. What a slap in the face to arrive home to this after a trip to get the best care possible for our little girl.
There have been a lot of cases of accusations of child abuse associated with OI. Often times children have not had a positive DNA match to prove that it is not in fact child abuse. We got right on the phone with the OI foundation to get advice about how to handle the visit from the social worker. They told us to make sure we had a third party present and to be sure that we printed out the resources on the OIF website regarding how to differentiate between child abuse and OI. Wednesday night was a rough one.
Our social worker arrived (1.5 hours late) and was friendly from the beginning. We had been warned that they may be rather accusatory, at least at the beginning, and were fortunate to have a positive experience right off the bat. We found out that the call came in anonymously, as they usually do, and said that they saw me pick Molly up out of her stroller, shake her and then put her back in the stroller. We were speechless. The person did not know our names, but did know our address, so we are assuming it was a neighbor. Whoever it was obviously didn't know about Molly's diagnosis because there would have been serious consequences if I had done what they reported. I don't know what motivated this anonymous "Samaritan" to fabricate such a report. I don't do anything with Molly that would even resemble shaking, so they had to have knowingly fabricated the incident. We don't know who did it, but have an idea of who might have. It obviously doesn't matter who it was. We were all prepared with our OI printouts and documentation of Molly's condition, we were not prepared for what we got at all. The social worker was very nice and said that they have to investigate all claims and that they were happy with what they saw. Unfortunately anyone can make a claim, and what has me a bit uptight is that they can make them as often as they want and all will have to be investigated. I had hoped it was just a misunderstanding that we could easily clear up, it is unfortunate that this was not the case.
Well, enough about that.
Molly is doing really well and is making more and more sounds these days. I am hopeful that some words are soon to follow. She is still her happy and fun self. She is extremely social and loves smiling at people to get their attention when we are out and about.
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