After my bad day last week I took a much needed time out. I spoke with my husband and my dear friend. And I also spoke with Cooper’s speech therapist. As I suspected they would be, all 3 conversations were very different. I also joined an amazing group on Facebook about Apraxia. If you suspect that your child might have Apraxia JOIN THIS GROUP! It’s called Apraxia–Every Child Deserves A Voice. I am so thankful I found it. The moms are just like me. Scared and sad and exhausted. But there…
I give up. Simple as that. I had a tough night followed by a tough morning. And honestly, that makes 10 months of tough nights in a row. My kids don’t sleep. I’m still nursing our youngest and he feels the need to nurse at least twice at night. And Cooper…well, he either sleeps 7-7 like a perfect angel or wakes up 2-3 times a night crying. We have never been able to figure out what the magic potion is. Nightlight, sound machine, Nuk’s, fan, earlier bedtime, later bedtime, etc. He either sleeps or he…
Cooper said Cow. Twice actually. We were sitting on the floor playing last night with a push behind walking toy. It has numbers and buttons and shapes on it and plays music. And it has one animal on it…a cow. Jamie and I were sitting on the floor next to the boys and Cooper pushed the cow and plain as day said ‘cow.’ I looked right at him and said, ‘what did you say?’ He responds with ‘cow.’ As if I was asking a ridiculous question. Now for anyone that…
As you may have noticed, I am writing this blog a bit backwards. It took me a long time to gather up the courage to put my feelings into words and I want to make sure that I write the whole story. Around 2 1/2 we really started doing a lot of new things with Cooper’s care. He was in speech therapy twice a week at our local hospital. The school district was also coming into our home one time a week. I have been very honest about my opinion…
Well, we survived the 3rd birthday party. No meltdowns…from any of us! Including me! I think I officially held my breath for 2 straight days. My anxiety for the actual party had really been building beforehand. I was scared that Cooper wouldn’t care about any of it. Or even worse, hit himself in the head. Sometimes, when he gets really stressed out, he will smack his head. It breaks my heart every time he does it. And he knows he will get a reaction so he will do it again.…
This is a hard post to write but I need to do it. I need to know there are other moms out there who feel like I do. I love my son. I love every single thing about him. He is my life. But there are moments when I would give anything for him to change. Having a child who doesn’t talk is really, really lonely. There are no ‘mama’s or I love you’s.’ There are no ‘why’s or ‘I do its.’ The car ride home from daycare is the…
Once the hearing debacle was over we were back at square one. I actually thought we were worse off. I’m not a debbie downer but we still had no good reason as to why Cooper wasn’t talking. I would like to call this phase our ‘do it all’ phase. Cooper was receiving speech therapy services 2 times a week at our local hospital and also receiving a visit once a week from the school district. During this time I felt really paralyzed about what to do. I didn’t know who to talk…
I took Cooper alone to meet with the School Audiologist. I didn’t want Sawyer or my husband with us. I wanted it to be quick and painless. I wanted it to be easy. For the millionth time I prayed that life with Cooper could be easier. Why did it always have to be so hard? The School Audiologist met us at the Scottish Rite Clinic. This place is amazing. They specialize in working with children that have speech and language disorders. It was calm. I liked calm. I think angels…
Hearing aids are expensive. I will add that at the time we had really good insurance and hearing aids are still expensive. We had to bring a check for $1600 when we picked them up. That is a lot of money to us. So we were pretty stressed out putting the hearing aids on our wild toddler with sensory issues. How the hell is this going to work? I want to add a little info here about the hearing aids themselves. While we waited to get the hearing aids I googled…
