I chose a life of motherhood, but this motherhood chose me. A different one of sorts, a special needs one. And because of this, I have needed more help along the way. A lot more. My son Noah wouldn’t be where he is today without our village, truly. Each person we’ve encountered on this journey has played a crucial role in our lives, and I am so grateful for each and every one of them. There is one person in particular that I have been exceptionally thankful for lately, and…
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Have you ever had that feeling, like your world just stopped turning? Like you are standing still, but everyone around you is moving forward? So dramatic, I know, but this isn’t like in the movies when your whole life “flashes before your eyes” or when scenes from your past/present go racing by on a fast train or something. When my son was almost two years old, the long road to his autism diagnosis began. This was also the point where my world quickly shifted to revolving solely around autism, and…
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Our friends over at Bacon and Juice Boxes, are running the 3rd Annual Special Wants Holiday Gift Exchange and need our help. What is it? This holiday “wish list” was created as a way to help special needs families get some help around the holidays buying gifts for their special loved ones and siblings. We know that there are so many expenses when you are caring for a special needs child or adult. So, we hoped to ease the burden around the holidays and show these families a little holiday…
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Our daughter was nonverbal. She did not sing. She did not make noises. She did not imitate. She did not point. We were repeatedly told she might not ever talk. Every time I heard this sentence it was overwhelming. Then we got the call from aeiou – an early intervention centre in Brisbane Australia. A place was available. A full time placement. My anxiety peaked. A full time placement for my nonverbal toddler. Do they REALLY understand what nonverbal is? How serious this is? Do they really know what they…
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I used to google. A lot. Late at night typically. Always on my phone so Jamie couldn’t see my search history. I’d google flapping. I’d google ‘my toddler doesn’t sleep. ‘My toddler has no words.’ I’d google ‘my toddler doesn’t eat any food.’ ‘My toddler has no imaginative play.’ I’d google all the sentences that ran through my head on a constant stream. The sentences I had never said out loud. I’d google nonverbal at age two. Nonverbal at age three. And then eventually nonverbal at age four and five.…
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I am a wallflower. An introvert. Painfully shy. Making new friends in your thirties is hard. For many reasons, it seems even harder when you are Mom to a child with disabilities. Cloaked in a facade of smiles and ‘He’s coming alongs’, it can be mentally exhausting to keep cheerful and happy and all the things that make someone want to be friends with you. My dear friend Kristin calls this her mask and I think it is the best way to describe how many Moms feel on this journey.…
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“Let me know if you need anything. I know what it’s like. When my son was two years old, he also had to have surgery.” Those are words very few people can say to someone whose baby is recovering from a major surgery and their entire world has just been flipped upside down. My friend spoke those words to me when my son had brain surgery. Brain surgery. Words I cannot even believe I can type so nonchalantly, because in retrospect, that wasn’t even the hardest part of our journey. The hardest…
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I promised I would give a weekly update on our journey with medical cannabis for our severely autistic son. We are just over two months in! We’ve seen amazing, huge, gigantic, breakthroughs. I am so excited to tell you all of them. But with that, we’ve also seen a huge increase in behaviors. We’ve learned that while awareness is an AMAZING thing, it can bring issues that we’ve never had before. In week one we saw a reduction in anxiety. In week two we saw improved engagement with his surroundings.…
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My autistic son can’t tell me what he’s feeling. He can’t tell me if he’s scared or nervous. The words don’t come out. So he shows me instead. And those feelings usually come out in bizarre ways. We call them behaviors. They are typically frustrating. They usually drive a person crazy. That’s the hard part about severe autism. My message today…behaviors are communication. A few nights ago, Cooper patted the chair next to me. He smiled. And climbed his body up onto my lap. He wedged his way in…in the…
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My husband and I are parents to an amazing, energetic, mischievous, almost three year old boy, Logan. We started to notice speech regression around 20 months, and I brought it up to his pediatrician at our next routine visit. I remember her saying that speech regression is related to autism, but she didn’t really see any other “red flags” that alarmed her. She referred us to Early Steps to see if he would qualify for speech therapy, and then we would see if he started to make any progress and…
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