Sit Before You Stand
Like most mothers, Ashley Graber tracks her daughter’s developmental milestones, and at seven-and-a-half months of age, MaLea Fox was on track. “She was just starting to get up on all fours and do the rocking motion of wanting to crawl,” Graber says. “She was rolling around, sitting up on her own, and just starting to babble. She was happy.” She still is a happy baby, Graber says, despite everything. “Everything” being bilateral transfemoral amputations, extensive nerve and muscle damage to her right arm, numerous skin grafts and surgeries, needles, breathing and feeding tubes, being poked and prodded, and handled and hospitalized for months-all as a result of contracting meningococcemia last summer.
