Woo, busy day! Took Liam to his second session of OT at the hospital. I think it'll be amazing there! I'm looking forward to seeing his progress with his new OT, Meg. Lena also enjoys going to "play" and is great at giving brother his turn. Baby has a cold, and I've been trying to keep the kids busy busy playing in the basement! Anyways, so Liam's story continues...
After scheduling Liam’s evaluation, we learned that we wouldn’t be able to see the doctor until August. That meant a 5 month wait. Yikes. 5 Months. I was very pregnant with Lydia, and the twins’ second birthday was approaching. I just decided we would take it day by day, and his therapists were happy to learn that he could hear, because that helped them know how to better treat Liam in therapy. I began to get impatient to get him into speech therapy, because he still wasn’t talking. We did finally teach him how to sign for “more.” Which was an amazing accomplishment!! Communication, even in the smallest forms, are a huge milestone for a nonverbal child. The closer he got to two, the more frustrated he seemed to become. Frustrated he couldn't get his point across, frustrated with Em and I and that we did not understand what he wanted or needed. 5 pm at our house was a nightmare. It was exhausting to battle with him, it was heartbreaking to see him beside himself. He yelled, I yelled, he cried, I cried. I didn’t know how to communicate with my son. With that, I started pushing to see where we were on the wait list with speech. Clearly something else needed to be introduced for him. We were incredibly blessed to find a spot a horse therapy facility near our home. And three days after he turned two, we were lucky enough to start with his speech therapist, K.
Figuring out how Liam would be able to communicate would be trial and error, and it still is. K started implementing a picture schedule with him, and I found that to be some what successful at home. It was however, a lot more challenging to incorporate in our routines than it is in a closed therapy session. But Liam, kind of seems to get the use of pictures. I felt guilty that I couldn’t figure out a way to be more consistent with it all of the time, but would use it in moments of desperation. Keep in mind I had just had Lydia, and Lena is still in the mix!!!
The day Liam was diagnosed with autism is kind of a blur. The evaluation was long. Em had just gotten off work, the baby was with us, and only 2.5 months old. The psychologist talked a lot about how he feels about the word “autism.” He said in his diagnosis, he wanted us to focus on where Liam is on the autism spectrum. He wanted us to focus more on sensory processing disorder and sensory regulation, rather than just on the broad term “autism.” He told us Liam was too young to tell, but there might be more to his diagnosis in the future. He talked about motor planning being an issue in his speech, or it could be auditory processing disorder, but those diagnoses of course, would be a waiting game. And for the record, we still are waiting. He recommended we continue on with what we had been doing for him, and that he looked forward to seeing a big change in him. He told me that he could not promise me Liam would ever talk, but he couldn’t tell me that he wouldn’t either. A lot of our questions were answered, and a lot of my fears were confirmed. I left, and I cried. I cried, a lot. I felt sad, guilty, angry, a little hopeless, confused, responsible. I started blaming myself. The times I skipped prenatal vitamins because they made me nauseous. The french fries that I ate when I should have had a leafy salad. Of course, all of the "anti-vaxxers" comments started ringing in my head. I felt like this was my fault. Em on the otherhand felt better, he said now we can make a game plan. He was right. But I still felt like the only thing I could do at that time was cry...
With that, I will also say, loud and clear. I am pro-vaccine. I vaccinate my kids, and will continue to vaccinate them. And I think you should too, but every one is entitled to their own opinion. The benefits outweigh the risks, and the research is there and then some to point out that there is NO link to vaccines and autism. And with that being said, thanks again for reading, and...
To be continued....
No comments:
Post a Comment