Matthew was born on Aug 14, 2005. I came 2 weeks early, but everything appeared to be normal. His apgar score was 10's at the 1 minute and 5 minute mark. He weighed in at 6lbs 11 oz and was 19 inches. I enjoyed the whole birthing process. No epidural. I like pain. The most painful part of the experience was my woman doc not being there. I had to be substitutued an old man.
Matthew was a difficult baby from little on. He just seemed different. He didn't care to be held whatsoever. Trying to get him to sleep at night was almost impossible. He had the strangest cry too. I actually put him in bed to sleep with me for the longest time, mind you, I didn't "cuddle" him. He hated that.
Around Christmas 05, I had to have him hospitalized for RSV. He was pretty dehydrated. That was so hard on me, at the time, his father and I weren't together, so I'd been raising him on my own since day 1. Anway, they needed to put an IV in him. Gosh that was awful, they had talked about sticking him in the head but ended up using his hand instead. So we made it through that, wasn't long after that, I had to purchase a nebulizer. Nebbing him came pretty routine in our lives. He had restricted airway problems so he was always needing it. He had pneumonia on several occassions. None severe enough to hospitalize him.
We get to Memorial 06, and I find out Matthew has a MRSA. A very bad staph infection. My daycare lady had actually circled what appeared to be a bug bite on his thigh, I didn't think too much of it until his little "spot" got to be the size of a grapefruit on his fat little leg. So off to actue we go and when they did the culture on it (it was full of nasty, reddish, pinkish pus type stuff), it wasn't long and they said get straight up to the hospital.
I believe we stayed 2 days for that one. It was bad. Trying to figure out what antibiotic to give the poor little guy. He was more at that crawling age and we were isolated to his his room. Finally we were able to go home. No more crazy hospital stays like that for awhile.
Coming up to May 07....
Matthew had been in quite a few daycares before the age of 2. Four to be exact. I work an early morning shift and not many daycares are open at 5 Am. It's quite sad that it's like that. So onto my 4th daycare.... Matthew isn't quite talking or anything yet. He did start walking a little ways after turning 1.
At this daycare, a therapist would come to work with a little boy with downs. She noticed how socially withdrawn Matthew was. Matthew spent the majority of his time in his playpen. If they had him outside of it, he literally would try to rip a hole in it to get back in. I was always repairing it.
The therapist suggested I might want to take him in to do a Lend Evaluation, so I did. It was free. Why not? They did all kinds of tests and whatnot. They determined he was quite developmentally delayed. They couldn't get a very good audiology test so I had to have a BAER hearing test done. Basically they knew he could hear, but they weren't sure if the little trasmitters were transmitting things correctly to his brain. Insurance didn't cover this test, it was $1200, but at least it ruled that problem out. It was normal. That was a hard day though putting him to sleep to do this test.
From then out out, I had a lot to deal with.... Developmentally delayed. WHY?? What caused him to be that way? All the while, my family doctor thought nothing was wrong with him. A few months down the road, I start thinking, maybe he's Autistic. I decided to switch to a Peditrician named Dr. Bauer. I actually made an appt. and wanted to know if he was autistic or not. Dr. Bauer thought the way Matthew was acting that he could be borderline, he then referred me to Dr. Blake (developmental peditrician)... Since the referral, I've had a couple Baby Clinics where Dr. Blake along with an OT and Speech Therapist do an eval for Matthew. It's hard when you're baby has never said "mama". Dr. Blake ruled out the Autism. I still find it somewhat possible that he is Autistic, but I'll never get a straight answer.
After the LEND Eval, Matthew got into the Birth to 3 program. This past August, after he turned 3, he was screen for Early Child Education in which he is now enrolled. Matthew has come a long way through all of this and now says a lot of words. Finally. He still doesn't talk like a normal kid would, but its a start. Physically you wouldn't think there's anything wrong at all...
So here starts my journey... of the life of a developmentally delayed child, who is actually considered "disabled" by SSI. Although at this point, they do not fund him. Matthew does get a little help though SD's Family Support Program.
The next few posts will be of things I've written about Matthew through the course of all of this...
No comments:
Post a Comment