Hello everyone!

Thank you for visiting my blog, I really appreciate your support! If you made it here, then you are ready to hear about my crazy life with my two amazing children.

And so, the story begins….

I met my husband at 19 while working my first job at Aldi. Our story began with a cheesy pickup line and a little less than 3 years later, we were married and moving into our 1 bedroom apartment (just as COVID decided to grace us with its presence). A couple months later, I found out I was pregnant with my son. I had a relatively easy pregnancy with my son, other than some serious leg swelling by the end of the day that made me look like I no longer had ankles… ugh… definitely do not miss that. At exactly his due date, he decided he was ready to meet us in February of 2021. As new parents sitting in that recovery room, every little thing he did was absolutely terrifying, and when the doctor informed us that we could take him home only 2 days later, I remember being shocked. How were we qualified to take him home after only 2 days?! When we got him home, everything scared us. I mean the number of times we stared at him just to make sure he was still breathing was insane lol. However, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t already miss those early moments.

In learning to navigate motherhood, I was obsessed with making sure he was hitting all of his targets. Every time he hit a developmental milestone, I was so excited and was videoing everything along the way. He held up his head, rolled over, sat up, crawled, walked etc. all on time with his development. However, his speech was always lagging behind. I was constantly reassured by my pediatrician that he just needed extra time and that it was normal for boys to talk later than girls. I held onto that and kept waiting for him to say his first word. Now, don’t get me wrong, he was never a quiet child. I always joked that for a child that didn’t talk, he was very noisy lol. But having actual words or babbles that he would associate for the same object just wasn’t there. As his first birthday was quickly approaching, we really felt that we wanted another little one in our lives… Life just didn’t feel quite complete yet.

Flashforward a year and 2 months into my son’s life, I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. I still have the picture of the test that I took because it was such a faint line that I didn’t believe it at first. I didn’t think it would happen so fast and I was so excited. As I was navigating my second pregnancy… God the nausea was bad this time… Lucas was still not using his words correctly. By his 18-month appointment, our pediatrician brought up the topic of autism as being the possible contributor to his language delay. However, after taking him for a speech eval and hearing test, he passed each and was barely behind for his speech. I was told to come back in six months to see if any progress was made. At this point, he began to exhibit more signs of autism, such as not responding to his name, little eye contact, happy dancing (hand flapping but we’ve always called it his happy dance), and trouble with utensils. The more we look back on it, the more we realized that the signs were always there but we didn’t catch them at first.

Our daughter was born in December of 2022…. and she came fast. With my son, I had back labor because he was sunny side up, so that large noggin of his was hitting my spine the whole way out. However, with my daughter, she was facing correctly so my labor contractions were not what I was expecting. Nor did they come steadily like you read about. I had an appointment the same day that I went into labor with her and they scheduled me to be induced, however, they also did another membrane sweep to see if they could stimulate it themselves. The OBGYN that did the membrane sweep had told me then that they didn’t understand why I hadn’t gone into labor yet. Mind you, I wasn’t late, but I had starting dilating weeks prior and was hovering at 2cm for a while. When I got home at 2pm, I had started having contractions but they felt no different than the Braxton hicks that I had been having with her all along. By 11PM that night, I was laying across the island in our kitchen every time one came because it was the only thing that felt better, but it still only felt like my typical period cramps. However, they had started to get an average time to them so we decided to head to the hospital. The women that checks us in at the desk 100% acted like I was going to go home and I wasn’t in labor. But much to my surprise, when the doctor came in to check, she said I was at 9cm and I was rushed up to labor and delivery to meet my doctor…. Like I said, she came fast lol.

It was an easy delivery, and she held out long enough for me to get the epidural I requested. We were sent home with her the next day, technically less than 24 hours later. Our son didn’t know what to think about her when we got home and was more just excited to finally see us again. Despite this though, I noticed that he always checked on her, or would casually go and push her bassinet to soothe her. He was so sweet, even though you could tell he wasn’t making the connection yet that this would be his little sister for life… He has definitely made the connection now and their love for each other is the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen.

Back to our son…

By his 2nd birthday, he was still not speaking and we pushed for him to get a developmental pediatrician appointment. I started him with speech therapy again with a speech pathologist near us… it did not go well. She didn’t understand how to work with him and she was very unprofessional, and due to insurance restraints, I had to pull him and wait for an opening at a new place. Once, he began at the second place, he said his first word “Go” in March of 2023. I was told by the developmental pediatrician that there was a yearlong waitlist to be seen, but I called every week, and they managed to fit us in for an appointment in July of 2023. By that time, he had begun to say a few different words, but he was still behind. At the developmental appointment though, we were finally told that he was officially autistic. I’m not going to lie; it was hard to hear at first even though we both knew. I really feel like that is due to the stigma that surrounds the word autism. Autism is not a sentence, it’s just a different way of life.

Did this mean that our lives became more difficult?

Absolutely. I’m here to be honest with you, having an autistic child is difficult. Putting aside the aspects you face with an autistic child, you also have all of the different therapies, ABA, Speech, Occupational, Physical (though luckily he didn’t need this one), that you are constantly on the go with. It’s hard to juggle the schedules. For us, we luckily got into an ABA therapy service that has been an absolute miracle worker for our son. This was also a, called/emailed constantly to get on every waitlist out there. There are just not enough ABA therapists out there for the number of autistic children. It just goes to show how prevalent the spectrum has become.

He’s talking full sentences now, his behaviors have all gone down (though they still pop their heads up every once in awhile), he’s starting to interact with other children, and he’s been the greatest, most loving big brother for his little sister. But it was work to get here. You never stop advocating for them and fighting for them. And if I had a dollar for every time I got the look of “You need to handle your child”, I’d have my dream home already. Most people just don’t understand, and sometimes I’ve found that it’s not worth my time to explain it, I just tell them he’s autistic and move on. Every time you tell someone that your child is autistic, the typical responses seem to be “Bless his heart” “I’m sorry” “He just needs time”… and then the obvious one “Will he be normal?”… I mean who really define normal nowadays lol. I just tell them that he’s getting there.

So, this is my story, and it’s still in the works. There’s much more to my story but I won’t bore you with every detail. I wanted this blog to be focused on my life as a mother and what I’ve experienced with both of my children along the way. I hope you enjoy it!