Summer and developmental delays

I’ve been a very reluctant blogger lately, partly because I haven’t exactly known what to say and partly because I haven’t found the time to do any post justice.

It’s summer around here and that means slower days, sunshine, hours playing in the backyard, and a mama who actually has time and energy to be a real human being (not just a professor, communications director and exhausted parent). I’m still working about half time, but I don’t have to roll out of bed so early to get kids out the door. We’re all sleeping better and we’re nicer to each other in general. I’m drinking less coffee and more water. It’s good.

Yet the challenges in our house go on too. Matthew’s development is still slow, and I feel in many ways like we are living into the title of “special needs family.” It’s hard because I feel so sad for him and am still acutely aware of the profound losses he as an individual and we as a family are experiencing because of his many delays. In a frank conversation with our pediatrician this afternoon, she basically told me straight up that she’s pretty certain Matthew’s delays and challenges will be life-long for him. That’s not really a surprise to me, truthfully. On the outside I’ve been holding up this façade of believing that at some point he’s just going to snap into “normal kid mode” and life will move forward for us in the way we once expected it would. But in my heart (and my head) I’ve known for a while that our boy comes to us with a myriad of challenges that aren’t easily fixed or remedied.

It’s actually good to have a doctor finally speak these words aloud.

But then honestly there’s this other part of me that believes Matthew is developing in his own time. I’m not living in some delusional dream world where I think that one day he’ll just “snap out of it” and be speaking in full sentences. But each and every day he is working SO hard to learn and grown and change. I can just see the wheels in his head spinning each time I ask him to say a word or complete a task. His receptive language is growing in leaps and bounds. And he is definitely gaining skills and moving forward. Even our pediatrician complimented him on all his growth.

Which makes me ask the question, how much do I worry about him and how much do I just let him develop at his own pace?

Yes, we are now a special needs family. I’m the parent of a special needs child. These things are true about us, and they are things I wasn’t expecting. But I also know we have the skills, the passion, the resources and the support to parent Matthew and help him grow and thrive as much as he possibly can. When I'm especially discouraged, it helps me to remember these things.

So I’m committed to this task. But just so I don’t mislead my readers (some of whom may one day be special needs parents themselves), it’s also hard. I doubt. I grieve. I worry. I feel poignantly the many losses that both Matthew and our family have sustained because of his many challenges. And I'm tired a lot too.

There are hard moments in our days—especially when my mind starts to play tricks on me and tell me I can’t do this thing that’s in front of me.

But there are other times when I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the journey that is ours to walk. I LOVE Matthew so much—and I feel so attached to him. So even when it’s hard, I’m committed to helping him be the person that he’s created to be.

I also feel grateful for the faith that sustains Aaron and me through this journey—for a sense of “call” to this path of adoption and the way that the prayers and encouragement of others buoys us and keeps us walking forward during the rough patches.

Mostly I wish you all knew this boy the way I know him—his laughter, his learning, his kisses and snuggles (a relatively new thing), the joy he takes in discovering new things. My heart almost breaks with the weight of how much I love him.

What a complicated, beautiful, hard, amazing thing, this path of parenting Matthew. I had no idea how complicated it would be.

Nor how breathtakingly lovely.

Matthew and me with sweet baby Hayden, my niece.

A couple of Baywatch beauties!

Maya and Sam are with grandparents this week so M and I get some extra snuggle time.

Taking a neighborhood walk with Daddy

Our boy playing in the backyard.

To Matthew on Gotcha Day

That moment when I birthed you from my heart was not like when I birthed your sister and your brother.

With those first two, the pain ripped through my body, threatening to tear me apart with each push. Their bodies emerged from my own—wet, new, and covered in water and blood.

Their first cries pierced the quiet birthing rooms, announcing their presence, their place in the world. I cried tears of joy and relief, and I reached gently and pulled those new, limber bodies to my chest, my breast, my worry overcome with mama instinct as I snuggled those babies close to my heart.

Your birth was different. The room was loud with the cries of other babies, each one caught  by a mom or a dad who had waited months to welcome them with anxious hearts and joy mixed with fear.

I was overwhelmed with emotion waiting there, desperate for just a glimpse of your face, the face I had stared at for hours in the months we waited—singing to you, talking to you, praying for you.

When they put you in my arms, you felt small and helpless as you pressed your body into me, fearful and unsure. You looked up into my face and held my gaze, and as I cried tears of joy, you must have felt a kind of terror I’ve never known. It was a transfer—a passing—from one life to the next, and I will never know what you left behind in that moment.

I gained you, dear boy, and you lost a country and a culture—when so many months before that you had lost even more: your family and the potential for life in the place that was your first home.

In my arms you felt strange—smelled strange—but I clung to you just as you did me, and when I put you in your daddy’s arms, he began to rock you and sing to you, just as he did with our first two babies. It was that moment—watching the two of you together—that broke the spell of my worry and grounded me—watching Daddy sway back and forth with you, his quiet tenor voice humming the same hymn he sang to our first two babies for so many months.

When he handed you back to me again and I snuggled you close, I made the same promise to you that I made to your brother and sister—to be your mama forever, to take care of you always.

You came to me a different way, birthed in my heart, but that moment of your “gotcha” haunts me in the same way I’m haunted by my laboring to birth your sister and brother. It was a passage for them from the womb-world of warmth and quiet to the bright, cold reality of lights and harsh noises and always needing something more.

But your birth from womb to world had already occurred, and that moment signified something more than separation from your mama’s body to her arms. Somewhere along the way, you were also pulled (or handed) from that mama’s arms to a new strange place, where you learned to calm your own cries and to stop asking for what you needed. You didn't know there was more to need by the time I met you.

When you arrived in my arms, you didn’t know warmth or softness or the lull of a mama’s voice. You had to learn those things, and I will always be haunted by all that you were asked to give up in the first few days of your life.

And that day, when I finally “gotcha,” you once again gave up what was familiar to you and held me tight with your body, and you birthed yourself into my arms and my heart and my life. And your dad's too.

I am so grateful, my brave boy, that you made that choice. That you chose to trust me and your dad, that you decided to embrace this new life we are helping to make for you.

And today, though I am across the country from you in body, you are near to my heart and my mind. 
I will not forget the first moment I held you.

And I will also never forget what it cost you to be a willing participant in your birthing into this new life.

Wonder of Wonders

Sometime the milestones with our boy are mini and I only feel them in my heart. But once in a while we have a really BIG milestone, and I feel like shouting it from the mountain tops.

This is a mountain top kind of week.

Matthew is eating food on his own. From a plate. Not a mush or mash, but several different types of food in separate little piles on his plate. Glory be.

Not only that, he’s drinking water from a squeeze bottle all on his own.

It’s miraculous.

This is an amazing season with our boy—and I apologize for not blogging more about it. Life is also very busy and fast paced, with the end of the school year looming and so many things to get done, both at home and at work. But I’d be remiss to not at least share with you that we are seeing new and wondrous things each day in his development. He’s moving forward in his social skills, his communication, his eating, and his play.

And both Aaron and I also feel a shift in our hearts. It’s subtle, but it’s there.

I’ve read so many adoption blogs, and again and again I hear about the two-year mark. The first two years are so, so hard, and then when families round the corner into the third year, it’s like things just settle in and life becomes normal in a way it wasn’t for the two years prior. On May 28 we will celebrate Matthew’s Gotcha Day again, TWO YEARS with us, and it’s just recently that we’ve felt a kind of goodness and permanence that is new and so, so nice.

It’s not like every day is perfect. Some days are still hard. But we’ve accepted our boy, delays and all, and we feel SO grateful that he’s part of our family. We’ve quit asking all our “why did this happen” questions and have learned to embrace this journey we are on. And frankly, it feels quite normal now. Life feels normal. Matthew is so familiar. His delays and challenges are familiar to us, and we are encouraged by his many successes.

It’s good.

Send up your cheers for our boy—who is learning, growing and changing each day. And know that we are celebrating the sweetness of this season in so many ways, big and small—its normalcy as well as all the huge steps Matthew is making as he continues to gain skills and reveal more of who he is to all those around him.

Life is Good

We’ve had a really good week around here, between some nice forward motion in Matthew’s development and a chance to be outside together as a family, enjoying the sunshine and fresh air.

I realize that I’m better at posting when life feels a little rocky to me, and I’m not as good about writing blog posts that report a happy home front, but truly most of the time things around here are pretty darn good. Matthew’s making some excellent progress with his therapy, and we’ve connected with a new speech therapist here in Everett at the Providence Children’s Center who feels like a special angel sent especially for our boy. I’m excited to see what’s ahead for him as he continues to develop his language skills.

He’s also thriving in preschool—learning new things, sinking into routines, showing some fortitude for things like circle time and craft activities. We’ve figured out the snack routine (I send him something he can eat with a spoon) and for the most part he has good day after good day.

Matthew is also showing some new independence eating food on his own. He still pushes hard, solid food away (I think he’s afraid of gagging on it) but he is taking the spoon in his hand and eating his own bites of soft things (like oatmeal, rice, quinoa, banana, tofu, scrambled egg, etc.). Our feeding therapist has encouraged us to STOP feeding him entirely so that he learns to eat on his own. This has been hard (that’s my honest confession) but for the most part we are doing it, and we’re seeing pretty amazing results.

Most of all, we’ve just enjoyed some fun day outings outside, and we are seeing such fortitude and spirit of exploration that it makes the days out joyful. Plus it’s wonderful for Matthew to have the space to try out things—to experiment and touch and feel without us worrying that he’s going to break something or get into something he shouldn’t. When we are outside, I find myself letting out my breath, relaxing, and enjoying watching him learn and grow.

And these are the kind of days we have most of the time at our house. Yes, Matthew’s development is still unknown, but we have a kind of normalcy together that feels good—rhythms and routines that make life sustainable and doable. It’s a blessed, blessed thing.

So I’m happy to report a good week around here—with no big complaints and a lot of normalcy. I have no idea what next week will bring, but for now I’m enjoying all of Matthew’s milestones and not worrying about things I can’t control.

Mountains and Valleys

It’s quite a journey at our house, helping a boy who is pretty delayed learn and grow.

Some nights, around 3 am, I wake in an anxious panic, the reality of Matthew’s challenges weighing heavily on my heart as I wonder scary thoughts about the future. I could easily just omit this part of my blog post, but I want to be honest in this space about the joys and challenges of our parenting process with Matthew—so it’s only fair that I tell you sometimes I’m really freaked out.

It’s not Matthew’s “special needs” in general that are scary, but rather the energy and effort that it requires of Aaron and me to parent him well so he can develop to his potential.

I know that all parenting takes energy and effort—I get it. But I also think that unless you are parenting a child with special needs, you probably have no idea just how hard it is. It’s hard because it’s all so unknown—there is no “one day he will be doing ____” to cling to, because everything is uncertain. It’s the repetition—where it would take a normally-developing child 15 times to figure something out, it takes Matthew 30. It’s the steps backward—just when we think he’s moving forward using his signs and a few words, he settles back into a kind of helpless blankness that makes tantrums more frequent and raises frustration and confusion, both for him and for us.

It’s never being able to take our eyes off of him—he’s strong and capable of body, but his mind and language and understanding are delayed, so we never know how he is going to react or interact with something. Big questions loom: what if he gets hurt? What if he never grows up? What if he never leaves home? What if we spend the rest of our lives parenting a child with very little skills?

Yes, these are the big questions and the worries that flood this mama’s heart at three in the morning sometimes. These are the valleys that are real and heavy and confusing for us on this parenting journey.

But then there are also the mountains. The moments when we celebrate all that Matthew HAS learned, when we look to the future anticipating he WILL continue to learn more and more as he develops and grows. It doesn’t give us solid answers, but it does give us a kind of hope that keeps us going—the light floods through the cracks into our dark places and reminds us that we have so much around us to see us through this journey.

We have our faith and our belief, strange though it may sound, that God called us to this adoption journey and gives us what we need to see it through. We have our family, who walk beside us and take turns caring for Matthew and see both the hard and the good moments with us. We have our friends—especially those who understand challenge and loss in parenting—adoptive parents, parents who have kids with special needs, parents who have lost children. Although our journeys are different, these shared experiences and common feelings are so encouraging to us.

And then we have our boy—who continues to delight us with small moments of growth and development.

As we round the winter into spring, with summer ahead of us, I’m so grateful for Matthew’s independence and love of the outdoors. I’m grateful that he came home to a family who also loves being outside. When we play outside together, that’s when I feel most normal as a family. Trails and the woods and the backyard are all places where Matthew can exert all his wonderful energy and explore and I know he won’t break anything (except maybe his own bones). So we play outside a lot, and we anticipate doing more of it as the weather gets nicer and nicer. A mountain for sure.

I know I should expect this journey to have its ups and downs—in fact, I was pretty sure it would have some of both when we started it. But the valleys are sometimes lower than I thought they would be. I suppose that makes the mountains feel more significant too.