Hi, I'm Melissa

Hi, my name is Melissa. I have been following this blog for about 6 weeks, and finally decided that I need to share my story here. I have been looking for a place that I can share the things that nobody else understands, and I have found it!

My story hopefully isn't too long. I have three wonderful boys, two of which have special needs. My oldest son, Trevor is 6 and had autism. He has grown leaps and bounds thanks to some wonderful therapists and teachers. He was evaluated and began speech therapy at 18 months. So the life of therapy, doctors and such are pretty much all we know. He is currently in 1st grade in a special Language Enhanced Program. He does have more struggles this year than he has before, but he is a special little boy.

Our next child, Jordan is 4 and a very typical boy. He does have lot's of energy and keeps us on our toes, but he is a ray of sunshine some days. He is very smart and is in the stage of asking LOTS of questions about everything. In many ways he is like our oldest child, because we have had all the typical development stages with him that we have never had with Trevor. He is a wonderful brother and most of the time patient with his brothers.

Now on to our youngest. His name is Josh and he is 19 months. He has several problems, some of which have been diagnosed and some not. He was born 5 1/2 weeks early with his lungs not being developed. He was in the NICU for 10 days, with jaundice and poor feeding problems. We brought him home and have struggled since then with eating. We had to buy numerous bottles to find one he could suck from. His suck was always horrible, you could hear him all over the house. When he hit about 6 months we tried him on rice cereal in which he threw up or gagged on everything. He was not putting any weight on his legs, so our ped. suggested an eval with Early Intervention. He qualified for both Physical and Occupational therapy. We thought it was just going to be a temporary thing, but here we are almost 13 months later with no end in sight. His feeding problems continue to be huge stress on us. He is only eating pureed foods, with no lumpy textures at all. He has been losing weight, and we started him on a special formula we can only get online and so far it has done a little bit of good, but as of his last GI appt, not enough. He has been into the GI doctor for reflux and digestion issues, and is being medicated for both. His OT has been working tirelessly with him for a long time and we have made small progress, but not as much as we hoped. He is going down in January for a swallow study at Primary Children's Medical Center and then we have our first appt with the feeding disorder clinic in February. He also has been recently diagnosed with Sensory Integration Disorder and we finally have a reason behind all his balance problems and motor delays. He finally walked at 16 months after we got a Reverse Pediatric Walker for him to use. Since then he has started to tippytoe walk with his feet pointed too far out. So we just got him some Dafo Braces yesterday to help with that. He is still very unsteady on his feet and falls alot, but we are so happy he is walking. He wears a weighted vest to give him that sensory input and it has also helped. He is not climbing or attempting things like that. Normally once a child is walking the Physical Therapist releases them, but in Josh's case (we have an amazing therapist) she feels he still needs more help with the gross motor and is going to work with him on climbing and more balance. He also has added speech therapy to the list as well. His language is very behind at a 8 month level (he just had his E-Lap testing), but we have a good speech therapist now too. It's alot to keep up with for such a small boy, but he has an amazing personality and puts up with alot. He is such a trooper!

I am so glad to have found a place that I can get some support with the daily struggles that I go through. I am so excited to see mom's with autistic kids here too! I have two kids with different challenges and it seems like you all understand it all! I can't wait to get to know each of you and pick your brain maybe at some point! It is amazing how much help someone can be that understands what you go through! Thank you for letting me be a part of your blog!