LOXLEY, Alabama — When Stephanie Stanford’s youngest daughter, Skarlette, was born five years ago, she suspected that something was wrong.

“When they brought her in I asked, ‘Why isn’t my daughter crying and why is she purple?’” said the Loxley resident, who has two other children, a daughter, 19, and a son, 15. “They said the medicine they gave me went straight to her because I had her so fast. The next time I saw she was fine, so I had no reason to think otherwise.”

But about six months later, Stanford realized that her daughter was not developing normally.

“She just wasn’t tracking well,” Stanford said. “We’ve taken her as far as Birmingham and we still don’t know exactly what is wrong with her. It’s been frustrating because every test keeps coming back normal. All we know is that she is developmentally delayed and autistic.”

The testing began about a year after Skarlette was born, Stanford said. When the hospital where she was born released her records, she made at least one discovery.

“Her records showed that she went 10 minutes without oxygen, something that they never told me,” she said. “They just said she had a couple of ‘stop-breathing episodes’ and sent me home with a heart monitor, but she never had any issues at home. She was just (developmentally) delayed .”

Skarlette was diagnosed with optic nerve hypoplasia, a medical condition arising from the underdevelopment of the optic nerve, so she doesn’t see very well. At age 5, she still doesn’t speak and she has just started walking. About a year ago, she began having seizures and was diagnosed as having partial epilepsy although, after two or three attempts at changing her medication, the seizures seem to be under control.

As she gets older, Skarlette has outgrown many of the safety devices that are primarily designed for infants, Stanford said.

While she is just learning to walk, she is unsteady on her feet and falls frequently.

“We’re trying to get her a wheelchair stroller because she doesn’t walk in public,” Stanford said. “We’ve been fighting with the insurance company to pay for that and without it, it’s hard to go out with her.”

Stanford said she worked for her father in an office where she could take Skarlette to work, but after her father died suddenly, she hasn’t been able to work.

“I tried working overnight so I could care for Skarlette during the day, but it just got to be too hard,” Stanford said. They are able to get by now on disability payments and insurance Stanford gets for Skarlette.

A few weeks ago a new problem arose when Stanford woke up one morning to find that Skarlette had fallen out of bed.

“She is too big for a baby’s crib, but she’s not ready for a full-size bed,” Stanford said. “I stayed awake at night worrying about what to do.”

Then the thought occurred to her. Why not build Skarlette a full-size crib that she could sleep in? She went to a furniture store and found a twin-size frame with the idea of building a crib around it.

“I had a couple of guys offer to help, but at the last minute, they backed out,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

Then her best friend’s roommate, Bryan Nelson, came to her rescue.

“He’s always busy helping other people,” she said of Nelson, who works for E-911 in Robertsdale. Stanford, her friend, Linda Erdossy, and Nelson worked late nights to complete the project’s main construction in about a week, and they are just a few finishing touches away from completing it.

 “She’s been sleeping in it for about a week now and it’s been great,” she said. “She’s actually been sick and I’ve been up in there with her sleeping, so there’s plenty of room.”

Now, Stanford said, she just wants to say thank you to her friend and to Nelson for stepping up to help out.

“There’s just not that many good people left in the world willing to help out,” Stanford said. “I can’t thank him enough for what he’s done for me.”