Natalie’s Story

Natalie Demko has defied the odds literally from the moment of her birth. During her otherwise uneventful pregnancy, at 32 weeks, Katie Demko experienced unusual discomfort, instinctively feeling that something was wrong. Katie and her husband, Neil, went in to see her doctor, who determined that Katie’s placenta had detached, effectively cutting off Natalie’s supply of oxygen. Katie was rushed into surgery, leaving a bereft Neil waiting and wondering on his own. “They take her away and I’m sitting in a room by myself,” he says tearfully, “and I don’t know if I’m going to get to see either of them ever again.” 

Katie and baby Natalie successfully came through surgery, but by the time doctors were able to deliver Natalie, she had been without oxygen for at least seven minutes. At two pounds, 15 ounces, Natalie was placed on hospice, and her parents feared she would not survive the night. Recalls Katie, “They actually let me hold her all night long because they didn’t think she was going to make it.” But survive she did, and a new chapter of care and treatment began to support Natalie’s significant needs.  

Natalie would spend the next 98 days in the NICU, surrounded by a care team helping her to “gain and grow.” In gratitude for the team that supported Natalie in her earliest days, every year on Natalie’s birthday, Katie and would bring her back to the hospital where she was born to reconnect. It was on one such visit, when Natalie was 2, that one of Natalie’s original doctors recommended St. David’s Center to Katie and Neil, as the “gold standard for not only early childhood but all of the therapies.”  

Natalie enrolled in St. David’s Center’s Inclusive Early Childhood Education program, a model that immediately resonated with Katie and Neil. “The whole structure of, ‘We’re going to put kids with disabilities in with kids without disabilities, and we can learn and grow from everyone,’ just really hits on how we view life,” asserts Katie.  

Soon after joining the inclusive preschool classroom, Natalie also began speech and occupational therapy onsite at St. David’s Center. “It’s really great to have everything under one roof,” enthuses Katie. “Her therapists are connected to her teachers.” This is a sentiment that perfectly reflects what makes St. David’s Center so special, according to Inclusion Specialist Amanda Thomson. “Children might be in a classroom, and then they go to speech therapy,” she explains. “Their OT [occupational therapist] might come in and observe them in the classroom and provide some strategies for the classroom teacher. So, you really get to see all those things flourish in a space that’s the most conducive for growth for a child.” 

Natalie’s team of therapists focused on engaging her in what they refer to as “just right challenges,” creating an optimal therapeutic space that facilitates a child’s skills towards mastery of a task without them feeling overworked or overchallenged. According to Megan Appelwick, the clinical supervisor of the occupational therapy department at St. David’s Center, it is within this space “where we are constantly making adjustments to whatever activity the child’s engaged in and keeping it right where they’re at developmentally, individually in that moment. The ‘just right challenge’ is a mutual, amazing feeling of relationship and connection, not just for the child, but for the therapist, too.” 

Natalie has risen to each challenge. After six months at St. David’s Center, Natalie’s progress is astounding, as she surpasses each milestone with the coordinated support of her early childhood education teachers and speech and occupational therapists. She continues to stretch the boundaries of what she is capable of, learning to crawl and scoot around in her walker, eat independently, communicate through sign language, and make new friends.

For Katie and Neil, as they watch their daughter “go from this place of… so many needs, to ‘Oh gosh, she’s a toddler,’” these ordinary toddler activities are most extraordinary.  Affirms Megan, “She is ready to take on the world now. She is just like any other kid, [wanting] to be this independent being and take it all on and go. She’s able to manage her own body. She’s starting to take on all these other objects and people in her environment, which has really carried over to her success in the classroom. She’s showing so much more of her personality, and she is ready to try new and different things. She’s curious, and she’s got her own ideas now. So, the next step is, ‘Where are you going to lead us, Natalie? And what do we get to follow?’” 

According to proud dad Neil, “With time and with the right support system, the sky’s the limit. She’s going to be her own person and do her own thing — on ‘Nattie time…. It just feels like ‘Nattie time’ has sped up a bit since we started coming to St. David’s.” Echoes Katie, “When you have a kid with a disability who isn’t great at communicating, to see her being an integral, essential part of the classroom — and that’s because of the way that St. David’s is set up — it makes me realize that so much more is possible than I had even thought of.”