This blog of mine

Yesterday I had a meeting with Travis’s ABA therapist to get a quick update on how therapy is going. As of now they’re still in the “pairing” phase of therapy. He’s been going to ABA for about 3 weeks now and I have seen some improvements! I feel like his receptive skills have improved and he’s starting to point more now to show interests. 

His therapist was happy to say that he has surprised them since he started doing things (for them) that he didn’t do while he was being assessed and during the early weeks. This is good because it shows that Travis has trust in them and is now comfortable with them. As a result of him surprising them, his therapist now has to modify his behavioral plan.

Other than that, we have also started supplements on Travis. We plan to do the biomed route in addition to the behavioral therapy for Travis. We have yet to take him to a DAN/biomed physician (which we hope to take him in the near future, I just need to do more research on which doctor to take him and of course how much it’ll be as it’s not covered by insurance), but we have started a bit of the biomed protocol (I suppose you can call it that) such as putting him on a gluten free casein free diet and starting on some supplements. Some supplements that we have started is a multivitamin (we went with Kirkman’s Spectrum multivitamin, powdered) and fish oil. I have started him on the fish oil first and have not seen any adverse affects. I will start him on the MVI sometime this weekend. If he takes the two well, I plan to start him on probiotics. 

The three supplements are the only things that I plan to do for now until he gets seen by a DAN dr. I know there are other things such as chelators, MB12 shots, etc that are usually given, but like I said I won’t go into this until I see lab results and have the guidance of a physician. 

This is something that I’ll admit I’m new to. I was fortunate that Travis was an excellent sleeper. All he needed was his blanket, piano music, and pacifier. Nathan on the other hand, I’m not so lucky. Nathan is a bit difficult to put to sleep. You really have to work to put Nathan to sleep. Luckily, we don’t need to do anything such as rocking him or swinging him. However, HE WANTS US TO BE THERE WITH HIM until he falls asleep. If he is alone he will cry and cry and cry and cry. Honestly, I HATE hearing him cry because it stresses me out. So I’ll admit, when he cries WE GIVE INTO his demands. WE are part of the problem. 

When he falls asleep, he stays asleep. He does wake up once at night to  have a bottle, but falls right back asleep. 

That being said, I really need advice to gradually and gently transition  him to fall asleep by himself. I need something that doesn’t entail too much crying it out. So if anyone has tips/advice/personal experience that they’d like to share, please respond!

Ended up leaving with a food processor >_< 

A friend of mines posted this on FB. I just wanted to share because I know a few moms on here can relate =) 

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this……

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”

But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around…. and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills….and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy… and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away… because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But… if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things … about Holland.

Travis’s cold made everyone in this household sick! It started with him, then Joseph, then Nathan, and then me. It sucks because it’s going to be a nice week with spring like temperatures and we won’t be enjoying it.

Anyway, I haven’t been in the best of moods lately. I’ve gone through a combo of being angry, sad, and at times un-hopeful. While I’ve accepted the fact that Travis has autism, I do feel overwhelmed with the ABA therapy that Travis attends 5 days a week. I keep thinking, “what if Travis doesn’t improve,” or “God forbid he gets worse?” Today I made myself stressed by trying to figure out when/if Travis will “talk,” I put that in quotations because he does, “talk,” but it’s just random and echolalic. Granted the stuff that he does repeat, he does say it in the correct context, but still. I cannot wait for the day where Travis will even call me “mommy,” 

He knows what “mommy,” and “daddy” is because when we give him a direction such as, “Go brush teeth with daddy/mommy,” he knows who to go to. He does have (for the most part) good receptive skills, which has gotten better the past few weeks. I just want to hear him talk. He talks a LOT, but in his own jibberish and language that we can only understand a few words of. 

It also doesn’t help that upon my Googling, I’ve read stories of some not even talking. That made me panic a bit because I would be devastated if my son never talked. Hopefully his therapist(s) are correct in that he will talk one of these days since he “talks” right now.

Other than that everyone is doing okay asides from the cold that we’re all afflicted with. Travis is getting less anxious with attending ABA, but he still cries when we drop him off. It never fails to break my heart! Improvement wise, he seems to be pointing more, a bit better at following directions, and (in contrast to what I’ve written above) MORE verbal. Nowadays he likes to count (he can count 1-10, but seems to skip 5), showing interest in ABCs, and even sings along to songs now (though we can only understand parts of it since the rest is in his jibber jabber). Though most of his language is his jibberish, we have noticed that he TRIES to talk more, so that in a sense is good.

Nathan is doing well. He is getting better at crawling/scooting and is getting around our living room, which keeps him content. He’s also been having some major separation anxiety whenever I or Joseph leave the room. He still sleeps in our room and he is an awful sleeper (well to me anyway). Last night he didn’t go to bed till 11 PM and then woke up around 1 AM just bawling his eyes out! He still wakes up once at night to eat, which honestly surprises me considering Travis slept through the night at 4 months old. No worries though, every child is different.

He’s learned to say mama, dada, bubba, and sometimes it seems like he’s saying bubbles! He hears me and Travis saying bubbles a lot since I’m always blowing bubbles for them. He loves cuddling just like his older brother at this age. He loves kisses and will give you slobbery kisses all over you face!