punchdrunkmom

The only thing we have to fear

When I found out I was pregnant with Kai, I was terrified I would miscarry, and I ticked down the weeks until I was in my second trimester, and out of the woods. Ten to go, and then I don’t have to worry. Eight. Four.

Then I read about kick counts, and if you don’t feel the baby move enough, you have to count their kicks in a given time span. And, of course, just like with an actual kid, when you want them to do something, forget it. I would sit in my office and will him to kick me. Come on, Baby. Come on. What’s wrong? Are you okay? Baby? Oh! Good job! *looks up at passing boss* What? Have I completed any of the tasks you assigned me? Um, no. Can’t you see I’m busy? *slams office door* Come on, Baby.

I counted down the weeks. Twenty to go. Sixteen. Twelve.

I remember thinking, six more weeks, and then I don’t have to worry because then he’ll be born and…wait. OMG. What have I done? What. Have. I. Done? I’m never going to have another moment of peace.

There was a day when he was a few weeks old that I sat on the couch nursing him and watching America’s Wildest Spring Breaks or whatever. Oh, my God, I thought. He’s going to go on spring break. He’s going to drink too much. Will he fall off of a balcony? Get alcohol poisoning? What if he joins a fraternity, and they make him drink two gallons of water and he gets hyponatremia? Forget the fact that Kai was still a weeks-old marshmallow, incapable of holding his head up, let alone doing a keg stand. I broke into a cold sweat that lasted several months and landed me on a therapists couch.

“What are you worried about?” she asked.

“I’m worried that he’s going to drink too much and do a header from a balcony. Or get ahold of some bad ecstasy or drown in a pool.”

“Do you have a pool?” she asked.

“No.” I replied.

She regarded me with her fingers tented under her chin, and looked at the baby sleeping in my arms, drooling gently down the front of his terrycloth sleeper. “When are you thinking these things might happen?”

“I don’t know. Like in twenty years.”

“I see.” She looked at me thoughtfully. “What if,” she said, “you shortened the duration of your worry? Maybe you could worry about just today or maybe the next month, and shelve the whole spring break thing for the next twenty years?”

Well, done and done.

And then Jenny McCarthy went on Oprah, and all Hell broke loose.

Forget about the ecstasy. OMFG what if he’s autistic?

Of all the hypothetical worries like miscarriage or strangling on the umbilical cord, his organs somehow developing outside his body, a sitter selling him into slavery, and the actual worries, like when he was in the NICU because he was having trouble breathing or the day my parents drove off and left me to care for a helpless baby who relied solely on me (Sweet Mother of God) to keep him alive. This one. This one was terrifying. And immediate.

And I wonder if somehow, somewhere deep down, I knew.

What I was afraid of, was that this child, whom I’d fallen in love with, would just…disappear the way some autistic kids do. One day, they’re talking and playing with you, and the next day, bam! They can’t talk anymore, they won’t look at you. They don’t smile.

Back on the therapists couch. “It’s a crapshoot,” she said. “You never know what’s going to happen.” That cost me $150.

But he was hitting his milestones for the most part. He was happy, smiley, laughing. He sat up and crawled and walked and (eventually) talked. I dismissed a lot of things as being coincidence. His giant head, his love of those blasted Thomas trains. I began to relax my grip a little. And then he started pre-school and the teachers sounded the alarm. Speech delay. Sensory Processing Disorder.

The diagnosis, when it came, was a relief. Not because I didn’t have to worry whether he was on the Spectrum or not, but because it would enable us to get him more help. That’s how far I’ve come in the last year and a half. The first time someone suggested Autism to me, I spent all day in my pajamas, crying. This time, I wore mascara to my meeting with the doctor and left his office dry-eyed.

My son has PDD, which is part of the Autism Spectrum of Disorders. I believe that he will eventually outgrow a lot of the problems that dog him—the speech delay, the problems with social interaction, the ubiquitous need to be upside down. It’s a massive effort, with speech therapy and group therapy and occupational therapy and ABA therapy. And it’s interesting, but with all of that to focus on, there’s no time left to be afraid. I’ll tell you, though, that with all this effort we’re putting into the boy so that he can hopefully have a normal life and do the things that other kids do like Karate and t-ball and swimming lessons and go to college and have a girlfriend and be an astronaut and go on spring break, if he falls off a balcony in South Padre after drinking a case of Keystone Light, I’ll kill him myself.

 

The Big Oh-Four

“Do you have anything you’d like to say about Kai as a baby?”

This question was posed to me by Kai’s pre-school teacher during his birthday celebration, and between the tears and the lack of preparation for such a question, I was at a loss. Later, much later, I thought of so much. How he was whisked away after he was born to intensive care, and I craved having him back in my arms. How he loved to be swaddled, and we swaddled him way past the time when you’re supposed to stop. How he rolled over when he was only four weeks old, which was really his due date. How he had to lift his eyebrows to keep his eyes open. The lake of drool. The trail of Cheerios. That I used to nurse him while watching Sopranos, and now I can’t watch that show without thinking of nursing a baby in the middle of the night.

I brought birthday treats into the classroom. Gluten-free, casein-free treats. Because, you know. The autism thing, because maybe. We didn’t know at the time. I made fruit skewers, festively stuck into a pineapple so that the whole thing resembled a bouquet. Behold, pre-schoolers! The awesomeness of my creative mothering! I arrived during group time, and peeked my head in to watch the boy. They were clapping and singing a song. Even Kai. He seemed to know the words and what to do, pausing at appropriate places in the song to make faces.

“Let’s see a scary face!” said the teacher.

All the kids held up their monster claws and bore their teeth. “RAWR!” they roared.

“I said a scary face, not a scary noise,” she said.

All the kids held up their monster claws and bore their teeth. “RAWR!” they whispered.

Kai was dispatched to the bathroom to wash his hands before he helped pass out treats. Unfortunately, on the list of things that a newly-minted four-year-old will pass out to his friends with ease, you won’t find fruit skewers. The fruit slid off the top, and off the back, and Kai’s fat little fist couldn’t seem to find a good place to hold them. He took his dogged time though, passing a skewer to each of his friends. When the fruit fell off, he would pick it up off of the rug and put it back on the skewer, calmly and with great intention. A group of girls started to laugh when Kai missed a friend and then lost a piece of honeydew and had to work out how to fix both. He thought about it very carefully, even as the girls were laughing and trying to tell him what to do, replacing the melon and making sure everyone had a skewer. This is when I started to cry. Because he understood. And he wanted to get it right. And he was so cute. And so diligent. And because oh my God do I love that boy and he’s four and we’ve been fighting whatever he’s battling for so long and for once, I didn’t need to help him and I wondered if the girls’ laughter bothered him and, and, and, and.

So I was sobbing into a $10 fake pashmina I’d bought at the Miami airport, trying not to embarrass myself or my kid, and when the question came about Kai as a baby, I didn’t think I could even make my tongue work, let alone think of something to say. Like, when Kai was a baby, he ate a pint of blueberries and later pooped a perfect, blue turd. Or the time I had to call Poison Control when he ate some cat litter, and they asked for my zip code and it crossed my mind to give them a fake one. Or how we watched the pulse-ox numbers on the screen in the NICU go from 88 to 92 to 93 and back to 88, how that machine would sound an alarm when Kai went under 90, which was all the time. How we went to the hospital to take him home and they told us we couldn’t, and I had to make yet another trip home with an empty car seat and no baby.

As I sat there, Kai was singing the birthday song, and going through the motions of the Monetssori celebration. He held a globe and circled the sun (another kid holding a candle). He did this like he was a completely typical kid. The kind who asks “wh” questions and tells you about his day. Like he was any other kid without PDD and sensory issues and a gigantic expressive-receptive speech delay and possible ADD and ODD and whatever else DD. Later, he got to blow out the candle and after he did so, he looked up and shot me a huge grin.

Later, I went to Target and bought him a bunch of birthday presents, because, damn. That kid is so awesome.

And I wish I’d told the class about his love of jumping on the bed. How for his first Halloween, he was Yoda and I was Leia, and how his head was too big for the costume so I enlarged the yoda hat with a bunch of elastic. How he used to carry this wooden spoon with us everywhere he went. How he was so big that I got tendinitis in my wrist from carrying him, or that he used to sleep until 9:30 or 10 in the morning and all my friends were so jealous. How by the time he was one, he’d already been to Hawaii. There were all kinds of chickens running around the place where we stayed and Kai fed them Cheerios, and months later, we saw a bird in a park and Kai said, “Hi, Chicken! How are you?”

I could have said any of those things. But what I said was, after discreetly drying my eyes and clearing my throat and taking a steadying breath, the first thing that came to my lips. “He liked to tackle the cat.”

 

Um, is this thing on?

Hey! How’s it going? I’m Megan, in case you didn’t know.

I am a mom to son Kai, who’s four, and daughter Ryan who’s one-and-a-half-ish. Kai’s on the Autism Spectrum. Ryan is…not. I also have a husband, a dog and a cat that’s meowing at death’s door, but probably only because he doesn’t like the food here. We live in Chicago. Not in the Chicagoland area, but in Chicago itself. Just saying. In addition to the mom thing, I teach yoga.

My blog is about my adventures and misadventures as a

(OMG! 90 minutes later) Sorry. There was some minor business of some pasta and hot dogs on the floor, a diaper change, someone wanted some grapes, a load of laundry, a bottom to wipe, a tantrum, and because it’s been that kind of day, I refolded some stuff in my closet. I’m back, though Kai is sitting on the back of my chair, holding on to my ears like they’re handles.

As all you moms out there know, taking care of kids is a total breeze! I spend a lot of time reading, meditating, getting hot stone massages, and Kai! Stop poking me in the neck. Oh, crap. I didn’t mean to type that.

What was I saying? Christ, I don’t know. Something about a blog and a diaper. Don’t let me forget I need Ziplocs and Kix at the store.

Anyway. This is my blog and I...Ugh! Dammit! Gotta go.