When asked, Kari willingly shared her story with me of her life as a Mom to children with disabilities. Excerpts from her Guest Post will cover the next two days as well. Be sure to leave a comment if you have a question for Kari.
I want to start this whole thing with a short introduction of who I am and where we, as a family, came from. I am Kari, married to my best friend. I know a lot of people say that, but he really is the kind of guy who, if I couldn’t be married to him, I would want to still be his friend. We always knew we wanted children, even discussing our desire to homeschool, have 3 children, and so on before we got married. So, when it was hard for us to get pregnant, it was heartbreaking. We dealt with doctors, testing, a major surgery, and a lot of prayer when we were blessed with our older son, whom I will refer to as “I”. He is now 4 ½ years old and incredible. A year after, we got pregnant again (very easily), but lost that little one to an ectopic. It was hard, but we very much leaned on God, each other, and our family as we walked through it. And, a year later, God blessed us with yet another pregnancy that gave us our incredible younger son (referred to as “E” from here on out). He is now 2 years old and quite the wild little man.
Our sons each have quite a few issues. Before I get into how we discovered them, I will do a quick run down for you. “I” has Autism, sensory processing disorder, hypotonia (weak muscle tone – neurological, not physical), and something quirky going on with his hip that we are still dealing with in the discovery phase. “E” has sensory processing disorder, hypotonia, serious feeding issues, numerous allergies, and probable Autism (all his therapists are pretty sure, his doctors are, but we waited for the formal piece of paper because, honestly, my heart wasn’t ready for that formal label until more recently).
Our story started 4 ½ years ago with the birth of our first son. It was awesome. He was a c-section baby, but my husband and I laughed and talked during the entire surgery. When he was born, I just remember seeing this perfect little person looking out at me from the blanket. He ended up staying in the NICU for 10 days because of meconium aspiration.
To make a very long story short, when our younger son was born, our life exploded with insanity. It wasn’t something we were prepared for, no one could be prepared for it. Day one of his life was blissful. The next day, we were told we had a cranky baby and he would calm down.
Read more of Kari’s story tomorrow.
Like “I’s” story, Bubs spent his first few days in the NICU. I have talked to so many parents whose children have disabilities that go back to those first few weeks of life. Does your child with disabilities have a history in the NICU?
My daughter is now 3 1/2 and spent the first month of her life in NICU for severe meconium aspiration. She was on the ECMO machine for 9 days. We have increasingly noticed and suspect her to be on the spectrum, have SPD,ADD, and some form of food issue. It's all hitting us at once (seemingly), and we have not reached out for a literal diagnosis yet. We are trying to implement the GAPS diet on her, but she just won't eat. She would go literally days without eating to avoid the diet food. I don't think she can sense a full or empty stomach. We're not sure what to do yet; just gleaning information. Thanks for your post! It's helpful even over a year later!