Writing is one of my outlets. The other one is singing, but this journey will need more than singing as an outlet. I hope that besides being an outlet for me, it can help others who may be going through a similar journey. I'm not sure where this journey will take us, I just know we are at the beginning of what will probably be a crazy ride.
We have a son named John. He just turned 4 in September. He is an answer to our prayers just as our older girls were. I love being a mom and I feel like this is what I was created for, but this road of motherhood has been taking a crazy turn. I love my son, but things have not been going like I pictured in my head when I pictured raising a sweet blonde-haired, blue-eyed little boy. Let me explain.
Since my son was born he's never been a sleeper. He spent the first six weeks of his life screaming nightly from 11:00pm to about 1:00am. The day he turned six weeks old, it just suddenly stopped. Since then, he does not go to bed earlier than 10:30-11:00 and is up promptly at 7:30 each morning. He will occasionally sleep until 8:00, but its very rare. In the afternoons, he usually needs some kind of a nap, but if I allow him to nap we are usually awake past midnight. The poor kid just doesn't get the sleep he needs.
In the past year or so, we've seen his behaviors get significantly worse and it's been tough to figure out ways to deal with them. My husband and I are exhausted and when we go in public we are embarrassed by what we deal with. Even going to church is tough....and I'm the worship leader!!!!
We started praying that God would reveal to us what we need to know about our son. Not necessarily to change him, but to learn how to deal with the behaviors in the correct way and teach him how to cope with them himself. It was just mere days after this that the word aspergers came to me. I was researching ADHD and then found a site explaining how the two can have similar symptoms, but then pointed out what made them different. Suddenly I felt like I was reading about my son! Did they have cameras in our house recording his evert move? Or is it that my son truly has something going on that is more than just behaviors?
I still don't have any official answers. This all just came up within the past month and we are working on getting some second opinions (don't get me started on the first opinion). But that's where this blog will come in handy to track our journey and maybe even help those who might be on this journey as well.
Whether it might be ADHD, Aspergers, or something else going on, I plan to follow my "mommy gut" and keep going until we have the answers that we need.
As I sit here typing this, it's almost midnight, and John is still not sleeping. He's had his nightly melatonin to get him to relax and hopefully sleep, but he had a nap this afternoon.....so here I sit trying to get him to relax. I could try to go to bed, but since he is not able to fall asleep alone, I sit here with him waiting.
Believe me, we've tried all sorts of techniques to get him to sleep on his own....or even in his own bedroom (he sleeps on the couch in the living room) but nothing works. Even as a baby, we could never do the crying it out method with John. We've had all sorts of advice thrown or way and still nothing works. So for now, our living room turns into a bedroom at 10:00 at night and I'm awake until John falls asleep.
I think I'll wrap it up for tonight, but I plan to post often as a way to journal the behaviors as well as to give you an insight to our daily life with a child who has behavior issues. Thanks for reading and we'll "blog" at you later!!!
God Bless!!
-John's Mommy
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