My name is Stacy Hartmann. My husband Danny and I have been married for 8 years. We have a son named River, who is 5 and a daughter named Adeline, who is 2. We live near our families in Southern California where Danny works as a electrical engineer and I am a stay at home mom. River was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome just a year ago. While our son was the center of our world, my husband and I always knew something about him was different. As a baby he…
Before autism. Before Harbor. Before Sawyer. Before Cooper. I had a miscarriage. Jamie and I were newlyweds. We got pregnant the first month we tried. Which was immediately after we got married. We saw a heartbeat at 8 weeks. We told everyone. We announced on Facebook. We planned. We bought. We prepared. We were going to be parents. We talked about the parents we would be. And the child he or she would be. At 13 weeks there was no heartbeat. I was devastated. That word actually doesn’t even accurately…
Along the journey of Special Needs, we often forget to recognize those people who chose to truly walk beside our families and make a difference. Maybe, we just begin to feel like they are family, one of us. In reality they have chosen to to be there, and that’s a choice that deserves to be honored. With Thanksgiving around the corner, I’d like to take this opportunity to honor, Jake’s amazing speech therapist, Kelly Cadden! Kelly came into our lives almost three years ago when I embarked on the home…
This November I am thankful for the aide that made a difference in my son’s life. The aides that work with our kiddos definitely don’t get the thanks they deserve. A little bit about our family…My husband Gary and I have been married for 12 years. We met working as Firefighters. I am now a stay at home mom and advocate for our son Andrew. Gary is a full time firefighter/paramedic along with a councilperson for the Village we reside in. We have twins who recently turned 9 years old.…
I would like to honor the amazing therapists at Accelerate Early Intervention. They listened to me when no one else did. They believed in my sons abilities and they nurtured and cared for both of us like family for three years. I stumbled into their small facility teary eyed and scared when my son was around 20 months. Owen began therapy with them at age 2 and spent 10-15 hrs a week with them for 3 years. They became an extended family. They never gave up on Owen and were…
“Call Baapa. Call Baapa. Call Baapa. Call Baapa. Call Baapa.” Conor repeated this over and over and over (and over and over) while he paged through a book on the living room floor. He was stuck. This has started happening more lately and it always breaks me. As I stood there silent I couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down my cheeks again. I just wish his brain worked right, the thought swept over me again for the 100th time that week. Conor was diagnosed with Fragile X Syndrome shortly after his second…
My husband and I are, in a sense, new to this role of being special needs parents. Both of our children have fragile x syndrome and although our boys were born with this genetic condition, we didn’t know how significant our 2 year old son’s delays were until this past summer when Caleb’s genetic results came back. A few months after receiving Caleb’s results, we got news of Ben’s diagnosis as well. Both of our boys have full mutations of fragile x syndrome which causes them to have significant developmental…
When my daughter was first diagnosed on the autism spectrum last year, I clung to the concept that it was no big deal—that it was “mild,” and she was “high functioning.” She was going to be fine and this was not going to interrupt our lives because she was so smart and how could that happen? But looking back, I now wonder—what does that mean? What is “high functioning autism (HFA)?” Well, it’s not a medical term or recognized diagnosis from the DSM-5 manual, it’s just how some parents prefer…
Look at this smile. He’s back. We made it through another regression. Another loss of skills and spike in behaviors. This one lasted nearly two months. Which in our autism world is actually short. I don’t know what caused it. Maybe getting a new sibling. Maybe the ear infection he had. Or a full moon, new therapist, or change of season. I’ll most likely never know. That’s our autism world. A mystery. It’s constant ups and downs. Gaining skills. Losing skills. I call it a roller coaster. But we made…
Today, I brought my new baby in for his one month check-up. I asked all my questions and found out that he is as perfect as can be. All 12 pounds of him. As I breathed my sigh of relief, I asked the question I was too afraid to ask when Cooper was this age. ‘When do I worry about lack of speech?’ It felt good to say it out loud. This time I’m not afraid to ask questions. In this video I reflect on the days before Cooper’s diagnosis.…
