Tag: depression

Letting Go of Things

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Disclaimer:

With this kind of post, there is a tendency to see it as a pity post or complaining. that is not the intent. With issues like OCD and ADHD along with others, I think transparency is very important. Part of the difficulties of being neurodiverse in these ways is feeling like you are alone. I think talking about the things that are difficult for us are important.

I love a clean house. A clean car. A clean yard. You get the picture. I really like things clean. I actually don’t mind cleaning. It helps me to destress.

Having kids in general challenges that. There is a certain level of mess in between cleanings that you just have to learn to live with or you are constantly cleaning all day, doing nothing else.

When the kids were younger, it was manageable to keep things clean. I had a system. I would clean at night time and return everything to its place. If needed, I’d pick up a little during the day. I made sure that everything had a place and then it was easy to clean up. I got a roomba and that helped with the floors.

But then E got older annd learned to get into things. He loves food, and he loves making messes. He craves the sensory aspect of smearing things. (Not just food if you catch my drift.) We lock up our cupboards. Lock up the cabinets, lock the rooms he is not in, but he still manages.

I cannot watch E every second and so I have had to learn to be okay with his messes. His trails of crumbs. His getting into my purse and tracking things out. Turning on the water. Taking things off bookshelves. It is like having a perpetual two year old but with the intelligence of an 8 year old in figuring out how to do things. He has the emotional age of 2-3 and the intelligence of an 8 year old.

He is a smart boy and sometimes when I am not looking, if I have the cabinet open to get dinner ready or something else, he will grab food coloring or crystal light packets. Something. And hide it for later. Then when I leave the room, I come back to red floors and walls. There are certain things that we stop buying, but on the other hand, there are certain things that I do want to have on hand. Crystal light helps him to drink more fluids.

We use lockboxes for keys ever since he stole my keys once and started the car and locked us out. (That’s a story for another day)

He has discovered a fondness for art and drawing. He has also discovered that his preferred medium is my walls. It’s easy to say, lock up anything that writes, but harder to do. Especially when you have a 10 year old who might leave something out for homework or forget to lock her room. Or is playing with E in her room and he grabs a marker and hides it.

I have learned that if E wants to do something he will find a way to do it. I try to then simulate the desired experience in a controlled environment. Like having E help me bake a cake, however he desires his independence and wants to do these things alone.

With the constant cleaning up after E, some things can wait till night, while others like sticky or wet things can’t, I don’t have time to do other things that need it. The car, my room, laundry, bathrooms. Some of the things I can hire a cleaning lady for, but others are more difficult.

Learning to live with this mess has been very difficult for me. In the past, cleaning is how I maintained a visage of control. It is my outlet, and it is my OCD. Without it, I don’t know how to cope.

I don’t judge other people on the cleanliness of their houses. I don’t even notice it. But mine, hugely.

I will create organization plans and schedules, how to keep on top of things. Those work for a little while. But then I get sick or am out of town, and things go downhill again, and I have to make up for it.

I wish I did not care about the cleanliness of my house. I wish I could let it go. I am trying, but old coping skills are hard to break.

With ADHD, there is a lot of all or nothing thinking. Like either it is all clean or not at all. Once my room starts to get messy, I think whatever, and then am not careful about putting things away.

I like to have time with my kids and I don’t want to pass on unhealthy habits or have A afraid to make messes, so I am learning to let things go and be okay with something level of mess.

I tell myself that there are more important things than a perfectly clean house.

So in the mean time, until I find that happy medium… Don’t judge me for dirty baseboards and messy room.

TLDR; I I hate messes but am learning to deal with them and not be a control freak.

What do you all struggle with? The hardest thing for you to let go?

The Ramblings Of Pessimism.

AC3 Comments

It’s like there’s a time bomb always ticking in the background. The background of my thoughts, of my routine, of everything in my daily life. The closer it gets to E’s 4th birthday, the more panicked I feel. The more restricted my airways become. I don’t think I ever really really believed that he wouldn’t talk. I kept thinking, not my E, he will eventually. He’ll get that speech therapy and it’ll take off. But, here we are at almost 3.5. Still no speech. He is smart as a whip and communicates in so many different ways, but I feel like the day is winding down. I am in the 11th hour. That might be a slightly dramatic description. There are kids that talk after the 4 year mark, and I do still have time. But in this moment of my fears, it feels exactly the way described. I think it goes hand in hand with the stages of grief. You swing from acceptance, to denial, to bargaining, to depression and back around again.

It’s the not knowing that really kills you. It’s also the seesaw of optimism mixed with the “well, its a spectrum” lines you get from the doctors. They never will tell you just how severe your kid actually is. I spend my nights googling, searching other autism forums, just trying to find out what I am up against. What group of autism is my son actually in? I hate this spectrum stuff. The spectrum is too broad, and it slights everyone. You are given a blanket diagnosis, with over a million different outcomes, and you just have to wait to see where your child lies. If you ask, they give you vague, nonsensical answers about it, “Well everyone is just so different on the spectrum. Anything can happen.” No definite answers. Tell me then what is the purpose of this “spectrum diagnosis“? What good does it do me if I still have no idea the true prognosis for my son? And why is it an unspoken taboo to ask just where your child lies in the vastness of this spectrum diagnosis.

It’s as if you were to take your kid to the doctor because something is clearly not right. He is coughing, he has random fevers, he randomly throws up. You know something is wrong but you don’t exactly know what. You get to the doctors office and they confirm your worries.

“Well ma’am, you did the right thing by bringing him in. There is definitely something wrong with him.”

“What is it? What’s wrong with him?”

“It’s Childhood Illness.”

“Okay. What is Childhood Illness? Will it get better?”

“We are not sure what will happen with him and his Childhood Illness long term, or even short term. He could always have these symptoms, he could get rid of them, or he could end up having just half of them long term. It’s hard to say.”

“What should I do to help him?”

“There are 100 different things you can try. Some might work, some might not, and… maybe, its a possibility, that all of them will not do a thing.”

“Okay… well, is there one that would work better for his type of Childhood Illness? Could we get more specific?”

“Don’t get caught up in the labels, just accept your son and his Childhood Illness.”

“Can I talk to anyone else that has a child with Childhood Illness?”

“Oh definitely, there are tons of support groups. There are so many moms that have kids with this. That mom over there in the waiting room,” the doctor says pointing. “Her son has it too.”

“It kind of looks like her son actually has completely different symptoms than my child.”

“It’s still Childhood Illness.”

“But there is literally nothing the same at all between our two kids.”

“Well, that’s the way Childhood Illness goes. Read this book about it.”

“But, this book is about children who sneeze not cough and have chronic bloody noses. My son doesn’t have any of that.”

“Like, I said, it’s a spectrum. Just read it. I’ll see you and your son in six months to discuss how trying as many of those 100 things you can in that period goes. Try not to go bankrupt on the way.”

Outside of autism and other disabilities is this considered an effective plan of action? I feel like the doctors around me spend so much time trying to instill me with hope and optimism that they forget to fill me in on the realities. I know that nobody can answer the questions that I want to know about E. But just give me a ballpark. There is a big difference in my life long-term having a non-verbal moderately severe child with autism, and having a verbal child with moderate autism. I just want the facts. I am not alone in this. In the autism forums that I frequent, the pages are full of, “Tell me where my child is on the spectrum. Does your child, who is doing this and that, talk? What should I expect?”

Nothing from a medical provider can change E. They can’t change the future. But could they help me better prepare for it? In a situation where hope is a dangerous thing, what’s the harm in just giving the hard facts? If my hopes are low, I can only go up if he exceeds those expectations.

 

Will He Talk?

AC1 Comment

Will my child ever talk? It’s a question that I’ve obsessed over for the last year. At the beginning, I thought about it compulsively. I would ask anybody and everybody. I wanted somebody to tell me that yes, he would talk.

We talk a lot in his appointments and therapies about progress. About E’s individual progress. That his timetables are different. That I can’t compare him to others at his age, but instead compare him to himself several months ago. Example. Several months ago, he was only babbling in vowel sounds, now he has been able to add consonants to his babbles. At the beginning, I tried to be patient with his progress. With his progress in OT I was patient, but with speech.. not so much. I always wanted to know if certain progressions meant that he would start talking in x amount of time. ‘If he is making those movements with his tongue, did that mean that he would for sure be talking by 3?’ I had to know when he would talk.

Several months back, I had just finished touring an Autism Center for E. I asked my question to the director. ‘Will he talk? Have you had children like E come through who end up with functional speech by Kindergarten?’ Her answer was the same as always. ‘You know autism is a spectrum. You know every child is different.’ Frustrated by the lack of knowing once again, I started thinking about why E talking was so important to me. What did it mean to me? What is my job as a mother? To make sure my child is safe, loved, and happy. So what if he doesn’t talk? What does that mean? Does that mean he can’t be happy? Does that mean he can’t be loved? No. I realized that me wanting E to talk, was me hanging on to the last shred of hope and normalcy for E. If he talked, somehow his autism wasn’t as serious. He could be one of those miracle stories that you hear about. Who seemingly grow up with no traces of autism left. In that moment, E’s autism finally sank it. With it came complete love and acceptance for my boy and what he was capable of. As long he was happy, that’s all I realized I really cared about. The fear over that question finally melted away. Whether or not he talked stopped mattering as much.

Do I still want him to talk? Yes, but now the reason behind it is different. I want him to talk for what it will do for him. I want him to be able to express himself. I want him to be less frustrated.

There are still days I ask that question and still days I get frustrated. But, now they are fewer and far between.

Coping.

AC1 Comment

Sometimes it totally catches me off guard that E has autism. I look at him asleep in his room and I see the pictures of him on the wall as an infant and it just hits me. The reality of it all. That my baby E has autism. It’s like a punch to the gut and I feel like I have had the wind knocked out of me. Especially days like today where he is really hard and the autism is more obvious. I look at that those old photos and with them are my expectations of what I thought he would be like and what I thought my life would be like. I expected him to be a typical little boy. He would go through the same stages and milestones as A. I see those pictures and it’s like they were another lifetime. It’s almost as if that boy still exists out there, and that mom still exists out there. And then I am here. People try to be optimistic with me. They say, he will be fine, he will do great. I hope for those things too, but what they don’t understand is that I am still dealing with the loss of what I thought he would be. I am still grieving my old life. To me in this moment, Autism is everything. I am grateful for what I have. I am grateful for the resources I have, but sometimes I am still just sad. And defeated. Sometimes it takes every ounce of energy to run after him again. Or to ignore the intense embarrassment I feel when he is shrieking and I am taking him out of the restaurant while everyone watches. Or feeling anxious as some stranger at a store comes over and tries to play with him and tries to be interactive. I pray that he just looks at them once so the moment will be over. Sometimes it feels like I have been dealt more than I can handle. For those days, there is writing and David Sedaris.

Post Partum Preparedness

AC1 Comment

Britney Spears is my favorite. Judge away, but there is something about her. I am a Britney lover and I think she is the best. I was watching her Billboard Music Awards performance today. I googled it, and the first video that came up was of a man mocking her. He said something along the lines of, “ Look who they let out of the mental asylum to lip-sync her way through a terrible performance.” Whether you like her or her music, the way he referred to her is inexcusable, and it is all too common. She has had to deal with her mental health in the public’s eye and she gets mocked over and over for it. People tend to either be afraid of those who are mentally unwell and react with mocking them, or they think it is in their head, something that they can get over- a weakness. With the terrible stigmas around mental health, it can very difficult to come forward or even admit when you have been struggling. Because of the attitude I see every day toward this, I feel strongly about sharing my story. I hope that someone can read it and know that “you are not alone”, and this is not uncommon, or a weakness.

After having my first baby, I was embarrassed at the way that I thought I handled it opposed to others. I saw other women out and about right after they had their babies. I saw social media accounts with people doting on their babies, cleaning, getting dressed, and just generally continuing on with life. I felt like perhaps I just did not handle it as well as I should have. I thought maybe because I was a first-time mom, I made it harder for myself then it had to be. I was under the illusion that everyone’s postpartum trials were the same as mine. If they could go to church right after they had their baby without intense crying fits and anxiety, then I should be able to suck it up and do the same.

With my next baby, I was determined to be more prepared. I knew how to handle a newborn this time. I knew what made things harder last time.

I would have my house immaculate before I went to the hospital. I would plan out my meals for two weeks after. I had my husband start his paternity leave after the hospital stay and not the day I had the baby. I planned for people to come and play with my daughter. I had all the right baby equipment. This time, I would not fail.

I had my baby via planned c-section. The surgery went a lot better than my last one. I only was in the hospital for three days vs the five I was in last time. My pain was less. My baby was happy.

In spite of all the precautionary measures, my PPD was much worse. It was coupled with debilitating anxiety. I saw the world going around me but was too scared to be able to be a part of it. I hated feeling this way. I hated the constant fear and the non-stop crying. I sought help being familiar with these feelings. I noticed improvement almost immediately. After 3 months I started to feel like myself and gained back my interest in the world. I struggled still and I knew when I hadn’t taken my pills, but I felt more control over my life

Around this time, I was talking to somebody I knew who had just had a baby. I was remarking at her strength for being out to dinner and for giving a talk in church a few days after she had her baby. She said, “It wasn’t so bad”. I asked her if she had dealt with baby blues at all. She said, “No, I haven’t had any mood changes at all.” Her saying this, turned on a light bulb in my head. I realized that no experience is the same. Like anything in life, everybody goes through things differently. Unfortunately, I have to deal with postpartum depression and anxiety. I, however, have a lot of blessings in other areas. I was not failing at motherhood or failing at recovering properly from childbirth. I just had a lot more to deal with in this area than others. And others, in turn, had a lot more to deal with than I did.

This conversation changed my attitude about things in general. I was able to accept my way of doing things and stop comparing myself to other moms around me.

It is highly possible that I will go through PPD with my next baby, and no matter what I do to prepare, it will be just as hard. The only difference will be that I will accept myself and the fact that I will be doing the very best I can to get through what I am dealt with.