Welcome to my world! It's exhausting, it's unique, and yet I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world (most of the time anyways!). Let me start back at the beginning. I met my husband in college and in 2004 we got married. By the summer of 2006 we were expecting a little boy named Dakoda and couldn't be happier. Life was incredible, invigorating, and there was something new around each corner.
The morning sickness sucked but otherwise I just glowed throughout the pregnancy. Up until about the end of my 7th month that is. My blood pressure started going through the roof, I was swelling like Texas and I felt like crap. I was SO puffy I couldn't wear shoes and I could barely open my eyes. It hurt just to have someone touch me. I would bust out in tears if my husband put his hand on me because I hurt so bad. I went to triage two different times explaining that I was gaining 15-20 pounds a week and was completely bed-ridden. They just sent me home saying it was no big deal. Until the day my doctor sent me to the hospital because I had a "little protein in my urine". I was on Pitocin for 8 hours with NO contractions. Nope - not even one - at least not that I could feel! So the nurse sent some routine bloodwork down to the labs only to have the doctor practically run into my room saying "You're a very sick girl. You've very very sick." Well after a month of everyone telling me I was just fine I kind of blew him off. That's all he told me, and within 5 minutes I was put under general anesthesia and had an emergency c-section with a blood transfusion on stand by. Evidently I was in severe liver failure - HELLP syndrome I would later find out. A rare but potentially deadly pregnancy-induced issue for both mom and baby. Thankfully we were both fine and left the hospital 2 days later.
It was beautiful baby bliss. A few things surprised us....and the doctor....like my son rolling onto his side ever since he was born. I figured it was one of those odd things that he could do - every baby is different right?!
By 3 months old he could put complete weight on his legs and stand up on my belly. Wait - 3 months old? Didn't I JUST have this baby? I figured as a new mommy I was just gloating in his accomplishments. By this point he was SO hungry he was drinking 60 ounces of milk a day - I had to switch him to formula. My pediatrician actually told me to stop feeding him. I only fed him when he screamed and he never threw it up. I figured he just LOVED his milk!
By 4 months old - OH MY GOODNESS! He had 4 brand new baby teeth. This is when I began to wonder exactly HOW quickly he was growing. In the back of my mind nagged something about those with genetic defects who grow too quickly....he was in the 99% percentile all the time.....
By 6 months he was crawling. No wait - now he's walking! Crawling AND walking all at 6 months old. And I'm not just talking a step here or there - I'm talking about 20 steps. It was incredible. A part of me was completely amazed and totally proud of my "super-baby" and part of me was sad that I didn't have the cute cuddly baby who just happily laid in my arms. Once he started crawling he NEVER stopped. And it was terror in our household. Hah! We installed baby safety locks on everything.
By 11 months old he could talk in COMPLETE sentences. NOW I KNOW there is something extremely extraordinary about my son. He would walk to the backdoor, unlock it and say "momma I want to play outside". At 11 months old! It was a shocked for those around us for certain! Safety locks, well, they didn't work anymore. My son by 11 months could now find the key to our deadbolt and walk out the front door. So we installed an alarm system. Also during this month he had EXTREME diarrhea. And I'm talking EXTREME. We were changing crib sheets and outfits at LEAST 10 times a day. There was so much of it it would spill out of the crib and down onto the floor. It wouldn't stay in a diaper, so I was constantly cleaning the house. He was getting such horrible rashes from the severe acid coming out his bum that he now had open bleeding sores so I switched to cloth diapers hoping to prevent the diapers from sticking to his sore bottom. This went on for 8 weeks. 8 weeks - I was exhausted and dehydrated, my son wasn't in good shape and he ended up needing to be hospitalized for several days until he could stop vomiting and having diarrhea. It was B.A.D. The doctors ran test after test and never found anything. Finally by day 3 he stopped and everything went back to normal again - except that he was terrified of the crib bars.
SO we took our 11 month old baby home and moved him into a toddler bed because he was terrified of the crib. I cannot stress to you how EXTREMELY difficult this was! We spent more than 6 months and 4+ hours every night trying to keep him in it. Oh, did I mention one of his newfound traits was stubborness?
He was a very stubborn child which seemed to have an extremely high pain tolerance. I figured it was just because he was a boy. At 18 months old I took him in for his shots - there were 5 or 6 of them all at once. I didn't think anything of it. He ran a high fever afterwards which I still didn't think anything of - he was VERY prone to spiking crazy high fevers and keeping them for weeks at a time so it didn't even phase us. We were quickly learning he was a bit different than our friend's kids. About a week and half after his shots he began a seizure - it lasted about 2 1/2 minutes and happened in the car as we were driving home. I had seizures as a child and tend to have an abnormally calm composure when serious things happen so I wasn't freaked out about it, but let's face it, he was my first baby and I hated that it was happening to us!
The ER told us he had a febrile seizure due to an ear infection but when we took him to his pediatrician the next day he said there was no ear infection. I guess in all the chaos of it we never questioned it either way and was thankful he didn't have a second seizure. We didn't realize all of this until we looked back on it later. His pediatrician put him on allergy preventative medicines since he had severe allergies, croupe, and pneumonia on a pretty regular basis and attributed the fever to one of these things. This event in our son's life changed everything. Perhaps it did not actually cause what would come next, but it sure didn't help it! Up until this point our son was simply an extremely advanced child.
Although our son could still talk he became a ghost. When you looked in his eyes he wasn't there - it was scary and creepy all at once. You could just see the glaze cloud over his eyes. We used to wave right in front of his face and he never acknowledged we were there. And then somehow he would snap out of it and talk for a bit, then withdraw back into the ghost of a little boy. I was scared. Aside from his ability to converse in such an advanced manner my mind drifted to autism, but the pieces just didn't fit with his verbose vocabulary. My husband and I did the best we could with him although we were at a loss of what to do. This went on for about 6 months. I would never want to relive any of that. And then all of a sudden while we were out of town visiting family he bit his cousin - and chomped down pretty hard. It was a horrifying and humiliating experience....but little did I know it was just the beginning. That one bite turned into another bite and another bite and over a year of extreme biting with no apparent reason. Sure he would bite if he was angry, but he would also bite complete strangers and with no malicious intent. In fact many times he looked confused after he would bite someone ..... almost like he wasn't himself. No daycare or stay at home mom would agree to watch him. Our church even refused to allow us to drop him off for Sunday school. It was really bad. We stopped going to the parks, we stopped taking him to the grocery stores. It was the most humiliating thing I've ever experienced. In just one hour he would take a nice bite out of 7+ kids. It was crazy and I remember crying every day trying to figure out what was happening with our son. No one seemed to have an answer for us and we tried EVERYTHING.
About a year and a half later the biting seemed to slow down a bit, for a while, then it would start again. The most bizarre and maddening thing is, however, that the day we took him off of Zyrtec he NEVER bit again. After days, months, and more than a year of severe chronic biting on a daily basis (he would even bite us!) he immediately stopped when we took him off of the Zyrtec. That was a wake up call for us. I immediately pulled him off of all his allergy medicine and switched him to artificial dye-free everything. I was at my wits end and had no other options. He was still incredibly bright and far advanced over other children his age. During his biting episode at 22 months old I took him to Early Steps - a county program which offered therapy services to children with disabilities and social problems. Would you believe that they refused him any services because he was too smart. Even when I told him he had been kicked out of church and I could not find a daycare that would accept him because of his extreme lack of social skills they turned us down. He was almost 2 years ahead of his age in motor skills and fluency. 2 years. That put him at almost the age of a 4 year old in a 1 year old body. I knew he was smart, but that floored me.
Messes in our house were always big, blood pooling out of a busted mouth would go unnoticed, and my son ate the strangest things. Everything went in his mouth, including live bugs to eat, charcoal, trash, beads, and anything else that came across his path. Thankfully the biting had ceased, but taking him to the playground with other kids always put us on edge. He would frequently knock them over on accident, hug kids so hard they choked, and unintentionally end up hurting us somehow. My husband had a broken rib to prove it! We took him to a behavioral therapist to have him evaluated out of our own pocket because we needed help. It was VERY expensive but worth it. She confirmed that although too young to test he was definitely at least highly gifted - at almost 3 years above his age level. With his apparent lack of social skills she referred us to a licensed therapist for social skills therapy.
Social skills therapy was absolutely the BEST thing we ever did for him. The first month was T.O.U.G.H. He loved going to "play group" but there were extreme issues with his ability to act appropriately with other children....and adults. After a month of circling the room and spitting at the instructor she made the observation that she thought he also had a sensory processing disorder. AH - HAH! Now that made sense! He was sensory seeking - and very much so! He was not afraid of heights and was an extreme daredevil. By 3 years old he rode on Tower of Terror...and loved it. Nothing frightened him....except for the ice cream man and the dark - both of which he was extremely terrified of. So much that he would shake in fright. After a few weeks in social skills therapy we immediately noticed the difference. The therapist was absolutely amazing. In just under 1 year he went from spitting and lashing out at every session to doing so well for 3 straight months that she told us he no longer needed her services. It was AMAZING. To have a child with extreme biting and autistic control issues to just a year or two later having a child who could cope with those around him (at least most of the time) - it just brings me to tears thinking of the extreme difference.
We took him to an occupational therapist and had a SIPT test done - a special sensory-certified test. Of course it costs a good deal of money but we were on the right track and we were determined to help him. It confirmed what we had thought all along, but at 4 years old it also showed us that he was almost 1 year and a half behind in his fine motor skills. He couldn't draw a straight line or even barely hold scissors. So we did OT for about 6 months and what a transformation! Our son was quickly turning into a magnificent child compared to his earlier years. Now he is in a part time K-4 program and on a 2nd grade reading level (self-taught of course). He is constantly amazing us with his observations but we are understanding him better. He tests off the charts for Asperger's as well - but the social skills therapy has greatly helped with that. In fact unless you observe him for a period of time with other children you don't peg him as anything different than the average child. We still have extreme meltdowns, but only about once every 6-10 months. We are learning about him and he is learning about himself. Although we can't afford therapy any more at this time he has made an amazing transformation. I am constantly on the drive for anything that can help us help him here at home.
This is my oldest. When he was 2 years old we had another little boy named Landon. SO much happened during the short span of Dakoda's younger years I couldn't possibly put all of it here. When I gave birth to Landon we were a little nervous as to what it would bring us, but he was a perfect beautiful little boy. Happy and cuddly - just what I'd always wanted! But at 2 months old he started pooping only every 3-4 weeks. It was bizarre, but his doctor said that sometimes it happens. By 4 months old he had lost so much weight, was dropping diaper and clothes sizes, and could barely pick his arms up off of the crib bed so I rushed him to the doctor. When you see your child every day you don't notice the gradual changes. For the past 2 months he had been EXTREMELY irritable - screaming about 20 hours of each day. He didn't nap. My husband and I were at wits end. I couldn't walk to the bathroom to pee because he would scream. I fell asleep pushing his swing....all while he was screaming. I couldn't even handle taking him in the car anymore. In our exhaustion we figured he was just colicky....until he started becoming lethargic and dropping weight. The doctor completely freaked out and ran conglomerates of tests. He was talking about kidney failure and cystic fibrosis - all sorts of things no parent wants to hear. We took him for blood work and it was so difficult to get a proper blood draw it took us 6 straight hours - it was HELL. We were beginning to wonder what we had gotten ourselves into! I just wanted my sweet baby to feel better again. It turns out that he had a reoccurring urinary tract infection due to a defect. It was such a simple fix. He's been on a daily antibiotic for the past 2 years now and not had any more problems. My sweet Landon is the cuddly child I always wanted, but he is also stubborn and independent like his older brother Dakoda.
They both make crazy messes together and I love them both with all of my heart. This blog is to help relieve my exhaustion and stress from raising two wonderful, creative, intelligent, chaotic crazy boys! Our house is a mess, sometimes there is a hole in the wall, and we have jungle gyms and hanging swings galore - both inside and out, but it's our life and we love it! (most of the time!!)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)