I knew parenting would be hard, don't get me wrong, but I didn't know I'd have an autistic child. However, I do recall saying to God one day, "God, if you need me to have an autistic child, it's okay, I'll do it." So, I guess I brought it upon myself.
I am worn out. My exhaustion can be related to climbing a wall: You stand back and see this wall; you think, "oh yeah! I can climb this!" So you start to climb. You climb and climb and climb and think to yourself, "Shouldn't I be at the top by now?" So you look up and see that the wall goes forever. You can't go back down because you've climbed too far, so you have to keep climbing despite how tired and exhausted you are. And all you want is to take a rest, but you're on this wall and only YOU can climb it. That's pretty much how I feel all day, every day. Okay, I take that back. The days I don't feel like that, I feel like I'm running on a treadmill that is in the size of a room that just fits the treadmill, so you can't get off, and the stop or pause button doesn't work. Yeah. So if you ever see me, you can ask if I feel like it's a treadmill day or a wall day because it'll one of the two.
Okay...now for the fun stuff:
Do you remember how we'd put the boys to sleep a couple weeks ago? Well, Cruise caught on (and Jett just hated it) and then started falling asleep at 2am and waking up at 6am. So for about a week and a half the three of us were living on 4 hours of sleep with no naps (okay, Cruise took one nap).
I'm still recuperating.We learned that some kids with Autism don't produce as much Melatonin as everyone else, so they don't sleep as much, so we started giving him melatonin. It has actually started working and now he goes right to sleep (without a car ride) and is out by 9:30.
Jett has figured out how to climb the stairs. I'm not too excited about this one. The bruise, cuts and scrapes stage has begun. He's wobbly and too unaware of his surroundings. But, he's just so darn cute.
Anyway, that's my quick little post. It's past midnight which means my recall and short term memory have shut off.
Now I must get back to Mt. Laundry.
3 comments:
Em, hope things are going better today. With or without the mountain of laundry. I'm glad the meltonin is working. Love,
Dad
Hey I use melatonin almost every night to sleep! I'm glad it's working for Cruise.
Sometimes I have wall/treadmill days too. And I have half the children you have. AND Olivia isn't autistic. I don't know how you do it, but if you ask me, you're doing it REALLY well.
p.s. when I worked at the deaf school I had the same conversation with H.F. except I said, "If you need me to raise a deaf child, I can do it." Ummmm. Maybe I should stop at just one???? :)
You ARE a fantastic mom. Even though you have those days,and it is hard to beleive me now, you can plan on looking back in the not too distant future and say, wow, how did I do that yet feel like you would love to do it again so you could do it better. Time will go faster than you can imagine right now. Hang in there. I wish I could help more. Loveyou
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