Schiz kid of the week Yanni

My journey with my daughter Yanni began in December of 2001,

when she was born. I had a standard scheduled Cesarean-section. Yanni is the third of five children and the two born before her were also c-sections. Surgery went wonderfully, and Yanni weighed in at a beautiful and healthy 7 pounds 8 ounces. 

But right after birth, her blood sugar dropped and so did her oxygen saturation levels. Unfortunately, the doctors just couldn’t figure out why. They placed her in the NICU, where she stayed for 4 days until they believed she was stable, and sent us home. I couldn’t have been happier, because although she hit that initial speed bump, she seemed to have come through just fine. She ate very well, and behaved like any newborn would. As time went by though, I noticed that Yanni didn’t seem to be “seeing.” She wasn’t tracking objects, and her eyes were bouncing around a lot. I brought it to the attention of our pediatrician at the TIME, and she blew it off as normal newborn behavior. I listened to her in the beginning, trying to disregard my gut feeling that something wasn’t right. In the meantime, Yanni developed a nasty case of RSV, and we were again thrown into a state of complete worry as she fought for her life in the hospital. She became so weak that members of my family and my few close friends believed (though they didn’t share these thoughts with me) that Yanni might not pull through.

By the grace of God, she did. Again we were sent home and I was relieved just to have my little girl back in my arms, away from the hospital, the doctors and all of those beeping machines. By our next well baby visit, Yanni was 3 months old, and I brought up my concerns about her eyesight to the doctor again. Again, I was shot down and told not to worry.

This time, I decided it was time to seek the opinion of another pediatrician, and so I changed to a new doctor and it was with her help that Yanni’s diagnosis came to light.

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