Co-host Mary Brezik shares her personal story of navigating the needs of her third child, Jack. As a pediatric feeding therapist, the very last thing she expected was to be put in the position of now being the patient of exactly the children she has always served. Mary shares her struggle putting together the puzzle pieces of his medical needs, leaning on her medical team, the significance of advocacy, and how it affected her friendships, involvement in the community, and faith.
Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and leave us a review! Also, visit our website The Speech Source for more resources and information, and follow us on Instagram @thespeechsource
Also, if you haven't done so already, follow our podcast! You will be the first to know when new episodes release. We would also love for you to leave a review and rate our show. The Speech Source appreciates your feedback and support! Follow here!
Follow Kim and Mary on IG here! - https://www.instagram.com/thespeechsource/
For more information on speech, language, feeding and play - visit The Speech Source Website - https://www.thespeechsource.com/
Co-host Mary Brezik shares her personal story of navigating the needs of her third child, Jack. As a pediatric feeding therapist, the very last thing she expected was to be put in the position of now being the patient of exactly the children she has always served. Mary shares her struggle putting together the puzzle pieces of his medical needs, leaning on her medical team, the significance of advocacy, and how it affected her friendships, involvement in the community, and faith.
Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and leave us a review! Also, visit our website The Speech Source for more resources and information, and follow us on Instagram @thespeechsource
Also, if you haven't done so already, follow our podcast! You will be the first to know when new episodes release. We would also love for you to leave a review and rate our show. The Speech Source appreciates your feedback and support! Follow here!
Follow Kim and Mary on IG here! - https://www.instagram.com/thespeechsource/
For more information on speech, language, feeding and play - visit The Speech Source Website - https://www.thespeechsource.com/
Nothing in my experience was that profound. I don't have this huge medical story, I don't have this life or death scenario, but to me this was the hardest time of my life. Barnon was figuring out what he needed to be a happy baby and to be a growing, thriving baby, and I just thought about all of my patients and all of the things that are way more significant than ours, of what they have had to go through, and juggling all the appointments for all of the therapies and all of the doctors and getting opinions from random family members or random friends on. Oh, is he crawling yet? And how triggering of a question that would be when he was delayed. I just I don't know. I know that God gave me this experience because it was meant to serve a purpose. Welcome to the Speech Source podcast. My name is Mary.
Speaker 2:Brazeek and I'm Kim Dillon. We are two pediatric speech language pathologists with a combined 25 years of experience. We are your source for speech language feeding, play and much more in between.
Speaker 3:On today's episode, we get to talk about Jack Mary's new baby. I feel like Jack is always gonna remind me of the start of our podcast and the speech source, because we started this and then you had a baby. You had your third baby right after it was great timing.
Speaker 3:Yes, I think we've done an episode before about all that happened right after we started. The speech source we talked about before, that's life is just constantly things are happening. So we wanted to talk a little bit about Jack's birth and what his little life has been like and some of the struggles you've had. And it's funny because in the work mode we're talking to other parents and giving suggestions and giving plans and it's really different and hard to be on the receiving end of that as a parent. Some of the struggles we've gone with with some of my kids it's harder to see, it's harder to recognize and it's always been surprising to me that I feel like sometimes I can have this knowledge base but I can't figure out how to put it together with my own child. You're right.
Speaker 1:I was on the receiving end, I was the patient. I've been so used to being the provider and Jack and his little story after birth just totally threw us into a tailspin and I learned a lot and I also had to rely a lot on the people around me and so, yeah, I'm really glad to be able to share this story. The people very close to me knew what was going on with Jack, but not very many people, because it's hard. It's really hard in what I'm talking with people socially. It was really hard to be real and it was hard because it's like no one really wants to know all that you're struggling with and I mean they do, but they don't. And yeah, it was a really isolating time for me because I was going through a lot and I didn't have that bird's eye view of how this was going. I was in the thick of it. So I guess maybe the best place to start would be what happened.
Speaker 3:And I also wanted to point out too, jack's your third baby, so I think what's tricky sometimes as parents is when it's your second or third or fourth or whatever child it is. You're supposed to know what you're doing and you're supposed to have this experience and you're supposed to be able to identify when things aren't going right, and I think sometimes it's harder to see that whenever you feel like you should already know. And so Jack was your third baby, and so I think sometimes that's hard.
Speaker 1:Right, it was all the supposed tos. You're right, I felt like I was supposed to do this the best this time. I was supposed to have down the whole feeding thing, the whole routine thing. I was supposed to be given this third easy go with the flow kid that just kind of assimilated into our family. And I think that's one of the things I kind of had to grieve is the whole idea that I had about having this go with the flow easy third kid that I just baby wear everywhere and take into target and I'm sidelines at the soccer fields and can easily just feed them and go back. That was not the life that we were given and that was hard, because that's kind of the picture that I had in my head when we had three kids.
Speaker 3:That makes sense, so okay. So let's go back to he was born and feeding him. I mean that should be easy now, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, and gosh, I am a feeding therapist. I mean what the heck? Jack was born. Everything went really well. I was blessed with a really easy pregnancy and delivery. He was induced. He was full term, nothing to report there.
Speaker 1:Everything seemed really fine and we were in those two weeks at the beginning where they sleep all the time and eat, and this was the kid that I was going to succeed breastfeeding and that was a big part of it. It was my third kid. My first had a milk allergy and a tongue tie, so I stopped breastfeeding, we went to formula. My second had a tongue tie but he didn't have all the issues but still it just worked best to do a formula with him. So this third one, I was just you know what I was in my head about it.
Speaker 1:I think I think I got a little arrogant on the third where I was saying you know what, I just want this for me. I would love to be able to breastfeed as much as I'm able and I'm very open, like you know what, if it's best for a film and do formula, we're gonna go that route. I was very open about it but at the same time I had that idea in my head that I just wanted to be able to breastfeed my third, and so I did, and basically what happened is that around two weeks is when he started getting really fussy, and not just fussy, but I mean cramping his stomach, crying out. And when babies are fussy they don't sleep, they're not happy unless they're held, and even then you're doing all the bounces and all the things, and so I was struggling to really do anything because he was crying absolutely all the time and it was really this.
Speaker 1:Mark of what I knew from my profession is GI distress, and so I was able to recognize that much of it to say, okay, he is in pain, constantly, something's up. I already knew my kids have had issues with milk protein, and so I eliminated everything out of my diet. I mean, I'm talking peanuts, eggs, gluten, soy, dairy, essentially a grilled chicken and apples, and that's about all I ate and I was trying to be able to breastfeed him. But he just got increasingly fessier and fessier and then I started hearing signs of reflux and he started spitting up and vomiting.
Speaker 1:And it was hard being the patient, because I knew that if I was in a place where I was the provider and was able to step back from this. Maybe I could have thought through it a little bit more or maybe I could have figured out the pieces to this puzzle, but I was right in the middle of it and also it's kind of an interesting perspective to be the patient, because it's like I had every single data point throughout the day and what I wasn't able to do very well is I couldn't make sense of it. There was so much overflow of information that I got that I couldn't just isolate the little points to put it into a picture together, like I usually would to solve a puzzle. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and I think that's a good thing to keep in mind when we're getting information from families is that this is their life, they're in it, they're living it, and then we're trying to extract these pieces to make sense of it. But you can't do that when it's you.
Speaker 1:That's really hard to do Right, and someone asking like how is feeding going? Well, that might seem like a good question, except that to me it was so hard to be like, okay, well, this feeding, and then he threw up this and then this happened. There were just so many plots and being so sleep deprived, being so emotional, you know, watching my family all suffer as he was crying nonstop, as me not being able to watch my kids' soccer games, not being able to watch the dance lesson, happening like I used to. It's like we were all suffering and going through this. And then there was so much information and I really had a hard time explaining it concisely to my pediatrician or to the people that I needed to help me figure out, because I felt so mentally compromised going through all of that.
Speaker 3:You were trying the elimination diet. You were recognizing it was GI. At what point did you seek a professional?
Speaker 1:So I was in contact with my pediatrician the whole time and I think you know, I know, and I harp on how important that is, because I recognize that I could not think through this and I needed an outside person to make sense of it and I needed her support. And so I went in for a lot of visits. I was never the patient to come in Like we just do our well checks, essentially, you know, if I probably has a near infection. That's the kind of mom I usually am at the pediatrician, and so I think she also knew me enough to say, okay, I mean, I came in every week for a while and even twice a week, and that was very odd for me as a patient and to come in.
Speaker 1:And even when she was out, then I would see, you know the other physician that was in the group and I kept coming back saying something is wrong, like we, he is screaming all the time, he is cramping all the time and at this point this is all that was kind of going on. It wasn't something major, he was still gaining weight and so the bottom line was being maintained, but at the same time I knew something was wrong and it wasn't that and I also know because I deal with tongue ties. I screamed. Him was like he does not have a tongue tie. It's not a transfer issue. He can easily get milk and we started a bottle.
Speaker 1:The problem was, how is his body processing on the inside what was going in his body? So I was able to kind of talk through that to say but that's also what freaked me out Something inside is going on from the time that it gets in his mouth to the time it comes out, and I don't know what it is, but something is off. He was constipated constantly. He was screaming. It was just a really hard time.
Speaker 3:So did you feel like any of the elimination of the things that you were eating helped?
Speaker 1:Honestly, no, I don't think that it helped this time around. I just think his insides were too far gone. First we introduced reflux medication. I was really on the fence about that. This was also an area that I felt like listening to my pediatrician was really key. This is when I was so glad that I had a physician that I trusted, because I knew from my own trainings about the long-term effects of reflux medication in children.
Speaker 1:I didn't want to give medication to my child but at the same time I knew something was up, if there was something that could help him. He was in pain and he was struggling. It really helped me in that point, because I couldn't think through all this at the time. We started him on a low dose of reflux medication. Didn't do anything. Then we went to a different type of reflux med. It was a PPI. That helped some enough to give us a little bit of hope. Then we doubled the dosage and then that really made a world of difference.
Speaker 1:It was the reflux, but then at the same time we were introducing different formulas. I learned all about the different types of formulas and what was safe or what was dairy-free. We finally ended up with an amino acid-based formula which is the most broken down, purist type of formula. It's always hard when you are messing with multiple variables at the same time. Because I don't know what it was, we introduced reflux meds and we changed the formula and he just got older in the process. I don't know what it was that changed it, but now I can plot it simply. All of that took the first four months of his life to figure out and do this process of all the different meds and dosages and formulas and give them a good trial, not just like two or three days but like two week trial.
Speaker 3:We always talk about a team approach when we're working with kids and how you were able to figure that out, because you were talking to multiple people trying different things. What's your team now with him At?
Speaker 1:first really it was my pediatrician. She was the main point person and then we did go to GI and we got ultrasounds of his pylorpsic fincter and his small bowel and his rule out things. We did do all of those studies but really the pediatrician was still point on that. What happened was in the process of figuring all of this out. One thing maybe is small, but it wasn't small Screaming all the time.
Speaker 1:The effects of that on my mental health and the effects of that on his physical health were both very significant Physically for him. I couldn't put him down. He would literally start screaming. This is again my third kid. I wasn't trying to just hold him all the time. I had to try to put him down but he would maybe last five seconds before screaming because he wasn't in that crunch position. When we held him we had to hold him stomach out, pressure on his stomach for him to feel comfortable. Because of that we could not put him down, let alone give him tummy time. That was really significant, the lack of tummy time. We'd try and he would literally be face planted on the floor or wherever he was and not be able to move his head, because not only was he so weak, but he was just screaming. There wasn't this opportunity to be able to work on tummy time very much At the time. I was just trying to survive.
Speaker 2:I wasn't like oh, we need to do tummy time right about now, oh he feels good, Let me do tummy time.
Speaker 1:No, I was like he feels good, Let me actually shower or let me actually eat, or whatever it was. But yeah. So then because of that, first he got torticolus, which is that tightening of his neck muscle. He needed occupational therapy for that or physical therapy. It's kind of the same thing at that age, but we did get an evaluation for that. Then he also got a flat spot on his head because he had such a preference to one side because he was so tight that he had this really pronounced flat spot. We were in the very severe category when we went in for that and he got his helmet and he was in that for several months, which is a whole ordeal as well, I guess. Yeah, Going back to your question, Kim, I guess our team in the early stage was a pediatrician, but then I was the one who advocated for I want a physical therapy appointment now, I don't want one later, I don't want to wait and see.
Speaker 1:I was the one who pushed that. Then I was also the one who said I want a helmet because my pediatrician said it was really up to me because it is considered more cosmetic by insurance. But I just said. You know what Earlier is better. I'm all about early intervention. Whatever he needs, I want to do it now. I don't want to wait and see. I do think that was a very important role that I played is to say, hey, if we're on the fence, let's do this now. I think there are a lot of parents who the physician is trying to read them to see are they more comfortable with the wait and see approach or are they the kind of parent who really needs to just do the avowel? And I was very much the no. No, I just want to go do the avowel, let's rule it out. Let's get the ultrasound, let's rule it out. Whatever we need to do, but I want to do it sooner rather than later.
Speaker 3:That's good. And so how old is Jack?
Speaker 1:His birthday is in two days, two days.
Speaker 3:Yes, two. I knew he was 11 months. I was thinking 11 months, but I wasn't thinking it was two days. That's crazy.
Speaker 1:This is his birthday episode Kim.
Speaker 2:Happy birthday Jack. Happy birthday Jack, that would be cute, I know.
Speaker 3:Jack, we're addition all the stuff on you, Jack, on your birthday.
Speaker 1:I know oh.
Speaker 3:Jack. Well, and we've talked about this too he is the cutest baby and every time I saw him it's just like this you know you're getting like little snippets and he would see someone new and happy and smiley, and so I'm sure that's hard too, because people probably aren't like seeing or knowing what's happening. I didn't see him a ton when he was in those early months, but he is just so happy and, you know, smiley all the time. Every time I see him.
Speaker 1:That ala care. I'm telling you that medicine I know, and that's what made me even sadder in some ways is that once we found the right thing for him, I saw how happy he was. And then I just saw, oh my gosh, I'd be not figured this out sooner. I mean, it's all hindsight, but yes, he is such a happy baby now and it's really because of the support and being able to get things done quickly, because also, every step of the way we've had a more expedited everything was shortened because I started earlier the reflex meds with my GI. I was also proactive of, hey, he needs this right now, let's get him this medicine, but he's not going to need it forever and I want to stop it as soon as he doesn't need it. And so he was probably on it for, I think, four months, which is very, very short in the grand scheme of things, but any could have used it, maybe a little bit longer. But by that time I had providers and team members who were tracking with me and understood my goal of saying, hey, let's use his age in our favor and as he gets older, I want to continue reassessing his needs and where we're at. And so, as he was able to mature from a GI standpoint. We were able to get off the reflex meds in a few months. We were able to only do the helmet for about four months, I think as well, which is crazy to think about. It felt like forever, but you know we didn't have to be in it like a year because we did it early Therapy. We started that early and I know he would have been way more delayed had we not started. And we're still in therapy. Now he can crawl, but it's very one-sided because his hips are still pretty weak. But now he's standing up and letting go, so he's on the track for sure.
Speaker 1:It's interesting to think about because nothing in my experience was that profound.
Speaker 1:I don't have this huge medical story. I don't have this life or death scenario, but to me this was the hardest time of my life. Bar none was figuring out what he needed to be a happy baby and to be a growing, thriving baby, and I just thought about all of my patients and all of the things that are way more significant than ours, of what they have had to go through, and juggling all the appointments for all of the therapies and all of the doctors and getting opinions from random family members or random friends on oh, is he crawling yet? And how triggering of a question that would be when he was delayed. I just I don't know. I know that God gave me this experience because it was meant to serve a purpose and I think in some regard it was definitely to be able to empathize and understand the perspective better of when you have a child who has feeding difficulties, who has medical needs and who isn't meeting the idea of what you had for what your child was going to be like.
Speaker 3:And then we've talked a little bit about what that does and we are going to get to have a really great guest on who's going to talk a little bit about this but being able to change our perspective when we have something in our mind as a person, but also as a parent and as a mom you have these visions, you have these dreams, you have these expectations and then just to shift that really quickly because there's something out of your control is really hard and it can be really emotionally hard, especially when it happens at the same time that your bodies hormones are just completely all over the place. That can be a really hard time emotionally and you've shared some and I think you did in our other podcast too just about postpartum. But were you able to get someone on your team to help you get support for you throughout that time?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good question. I was. I was trying to assemble a team, but I'll be real with you, I was still putting myself last and I think that in hindsight I should have moved myself and my sandwich up the ladder a little bit, because I was struggling so much with postpartum depression and I had that with my first and it was really bad because I was the first of my friends, my family, everybody that I knew to have a baby and suddenly I'm a mom at home on maternity leave and all of my friends are at work and I didn't know the community of moms yet. I didn't have any friends or moms. Anyways, it was that sense of community for me, and so I knew that going in with Jack, that staying socially connected, was very important to me and going out and getting outside every day very important to me.
Speaker 1:I realized that I needed to do several different things. The first thing I did was go to my OB and I said I am struggling and I need help. This is really really hard. And then the other thing that I did is high went back to church, because I was so isolated and we had been going to church every week with the kids before Jack was born. But I think even that little gesture of physically getting to church at the right time ours has this little parent area and we just held him and watched it on the screen outside of the service but just being able to be there physically I mean I was in and out of the message because I have a baby too but being able to be there the kids are in their classes I felt like I was getting back, like reentering the world in a sense, and so that was kind of an easy and I felt like it was risk free way for me to go and get back in and if Jack just started screaming again, I could simply leave and go to the car.
Speaker 1:I'm not in the middle of a sanctuary, I don't have to exit and everybody hears me or something. I felt like my family was being taken care of at the same time that I could do what I needed if I needed to exit. So, honestly, that was a really important thing for me.
Speaker 3:Isn't it interesting how that is sometimes like the first thing to go when things start getting hard? Yes, that routine thing that you might have been doing, and I just always think that's intriguing that. Why are we letting something like that go Like be the first thing to fall off the plate when it can be one of the best things that you can have going on? I agree.
Speaker 1:And, to be honest with you, I knew that I needed to go and I knew that this was going to help. But I didn't feel close spiritually at the time and I felt very disconnected with the whole world. I felt disconnected socially, I felt disconnected mentally, you know, just hormonally everything. I just I felt like I was this circuit board and there were all these inputs just coming in and signals coming at me and I was just fried. I had no idea what to do with all this input that I was getting and I just felt so overwhelmed. All I could do is pick up the circuit board and physically move it to a church. Something's got to move here, Some wire has got to turn on so that I can process information again.
Speaker 1:Because I just, I remember talking to my husband and he's such a wonderful, supportive husband. I just remember saying I can't think anymore. I can't think, I can't process information, I can't even the smallest things. I don't know how to fix them anymore. I don't know how to problem solve. I don't know what to do to fix my brain or to even turn it off so that I have this calm or quiet. I was just craving thinking again and not just reacting to things all the time.
Speaker 3:And then I'm like hey Mary, you want to get together and cord.
Speaker 1:Oh well, that's the thing, like life moves on. You know, it's not like I just got to sit around or something. I mean think of those early episodes like Jack was. I mean I had a monitor right next to the computer screen. I was like okay, he's down, he's napping, he's asleep.
Speaker 3:Okay, let's go. I think he's moving. We have like 10 minutes.
Speaker 1:At this time. There was some conflict at work and I just started a business with you and my mother-in-law passed away at the same time, months after Jack was born. And then you think about all the fall activities for the older two and they have needs as well that I couldn't meet and there was just so much. And I think to my personality. My husband always says you love the chaos, you thrive and the busyness, and it's like, yes, but when I can manage it and I love it being busy, but there's definitely a point where when it gets out of control, then it's really bad.
Speaker 3:Right and you can't fix something, you can't figure it out, and I think what's so great about you sharing your experiences? We talk a lot about the speech source and our mission and why we started it, and I think one of the biggest things is for us to give resources to parents and share things that can help them get through their experience. But I think we recognize that everybody's experience is so incredibly different. So you might have someone who does have a child that just has a speech sound disorder, or you have someone who has a medical diagnosis and for you you don't feel like there was anything crazy significant about Jack's story, but it really affected your family and your time in this last year of your life. And then I think you kind of went through all the things that we feel like are so important, and that was one advocating for him. So, even though it seemed crazy and you couldn't make sense of it, you knew that you had to talk to people and you wanted certain things and you advocated for him. You fought for him.
Speaker 3:So I think we try to give parents information so that they can advocate for their kids. And then the team approach. You created a team for him and we talk about that. A lot is just it's not just speech therapy, but it's if you need counseling to go with that, or OT to go with that, or a dentist needs to be involved, making sure there's a team and then community. I feel like that is huge. Whatever you're going through with your child, being able to connect with other moms and other parents that are going through the same thing or maybe they're not, they're just part of your community. I think that's huge. We are designed to be living in some sort of community, and then that is just bigger whenever you're going through tough times and need it even more. So I feel like those things you figured out along that journey and how important they were over the last year for you, and hopefully that's what we can communicate to Our listeners also.
Speaker 1:Yes, I am so incredibly thankful for my team and you're right, that's why we did the speech. Source is you and I were like we are connected, we have amazing friends, and I think about all the team members that I have. They all came from somewhere. I didn't just arrive and say, hey, just send me to whatever GI. I had a personal referral for every single one and I knew somehow the person, or I was able to connect with the mom, who knew the person. The mom connected me to the GI because my hospital was going to have a four month wait and I said I'm not going to survive that. There's no way we're not doing that. And so she was like I know a guy, you're going to have to drive a little bit, but he can get you in this week. You know everybody's looking out for each other and everybody wants to help. But I think you're right. You have to push back and you have to advocate or else you won't know where another door can open.
Speaker 1:And then Jack's occupational therapist was so incredible as well Another friend who was an amazing person we used to work with. I was texting her saying, okay, he's not doing this. How do I help him roll over. How do I help him? Whatever? I don't know how to do all these muscle things and she's grabbing one of her little girls' baby dolls and is sending me videos of okay, here's the positioning, try this one. And okay, you're going to do this, try this one.
Speaker 1:And she'd send me little things, just ways that I could work with him when I felt like I want something. I just need something to feel like I'm moving forward, and I think that therapists and your team members can really feel that. And then I also think there are so many online options. I didn't know about Kaylee the movement mama at the time, but now that I've done her crawling course, that was exactly what I was looking for is I needed a rolling one. I needed to understand the milestones and what to do when someone wasn't doing well at tummy time. So I do think there are so many other professionals out there that if you start talking to people, then people can point you in the right direction, and Kaylee's episode is coming up and that's going to be a great one too. I'm so excited.
Speaker 3:Mary, thank you for sharing. Do you have any fun plans for Jack's birthday?
Speaker 1:Ooh, you know. Third kid my mom was actually giving me a hard time this weekend. She's like Mary, no, mailed out personalized stationary for this party. This time I was like, ooh, I did do that. No, I did not do the mail out invites, but does not mean I love him any less, yeah.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:Actually, you know what, kim, I'm going to have to take a picture of it and post it or something. But Katie, beth and Nate wanted to decorate and they wanted to help throw them the party, which I think was really fun, and it was Katie best idea completely my almost seven-year-old. But I was throwing away an old coffee maker and I had these coffee filters, the cone shape ones, and she saw them. She's really into art. I was like, hey, can I have those? Sure, you're welcome to them. And so she takes them, rips them in half, glues them together and made butterflies out of them. What cute. And then she colored them, she painted sticks in the backyard, and so we just hot glued the sticks onto the coffee filters. And so the kids made butterflies for him and we're going to decorate the kitchen with all of tons of butterflies for him, and then we're just having our family over.
Speaker 1:And we're going to have a vegan cake because he still has his allergies. And then just do just some fun little water play in the backyard with the kids, and then you're so I'm just now realizing your niece that was just born.
Speaker 3:They're going to be, they're going to have close birthdays.
Speaker 1:Yes, they are, yes, and so they're going to be little buds A week apart. Yeah, actually, her due date was Jack's birthday, okay. So, yes, and yeah, they'll be spending some time together coming up with the person who's going to be taking care of them, so that I can actually work again and get back into my work mode. And my patients because I think that's something that I learned a lot about myself as well is the role that work has in my life. And I'm in my life and I've always loved my job and I've loved my profession. But I definitely, in all of this, recognized that I wanted to kind of have a shift from all patient care that I had been doing and programming and mentoring and I wanted to step back to blow it up from a bigger lens, and so I'm excited. It really made me just realize how much bigger this world is and how many moms struggle, and if we can be that clear team member for moms who are struggling with speech and feeding, how great would it be if we had a bigger net and to be able to help like Kim and I are doing.
Speaker 1:On a service level, I love everything that we have lined up. We have free in services for preschools. We have so many freebies that we've made and given to people. Jack and all the things that we've gone through as a family was such a spiritual transformation as well, and with my mother-in-law just realizing how short life is and I'm so thankful to have received all the help that I did when I was having a hard time and if we can help pay it forward to other families and the areas that we are trained in, that's what this life is all about. It's being able to support each other, give to each other and staying part of patient care is what you and I both want to do on some level, but we want to be able to reach more people and offer encouragement at the same time, because there's so many more people that don't have access like we do in a big city.
Speaker 3:I know you think about how you can Google anything and ask a question.
Speaker 3:Now, with AI, it's even crazier, but at the same time, it's so incredibly hard to find what you need and you and I have the resources and the connections to figure out.
Speaker 3:I need this specialist or want to look for this allergist, and I can ask this person, because they know this and a lot of people not in our field don't have that, and so I hope our podcast if there's a guest that we bring on that might have that resource someone can reach out to that person. I just hope that for people that are outside of the therapy world can feel a little bit more connected or at least figure out where to go if they ever needed anything specific. And I think we've struggled a lot with either like niching down what we do or keeping it broad, and for some reason, broad things just keep coming our way as far as our guests. But I like that too, because your team is not always specific to one area. But thank you for sharing your story and I know that this will resonate with a lot of people that listen to it, whether they had similar struggles or something completely different, just understanding that it can completely change the dynamic of your family and your feelings and everything going on. So thanks for sharing, mary.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast and check out our website thespeechsourcecom.
Speaker 1:Also check us out on Instagram for more ideas on speech, language, feeding and play.