Saturday, August 2, 2014

Parenting Special Needs Children Part one...

I feel like I never mention that our children are special needs kids. I guess it doesn't really matter to me, doesn't make things much different, except that they have a ton more doctors appointments on a regular basis. After parenting two typical and even advanced children, this is a whole new experience to me, but I love it.

But there are differences....D is almost 7 months old and is actively three months behind in development. If you took a 3-4 month old and put them together his chunky butt would be bigger, but they'd be closer in development than he'd be to a nearly 7 month old. He's blind of course so he doesn't have the curiosity factor to encourage normal locomotion. He only moves around now during a temper tantrum, and boy can he get around fast in his reverse combat crawl! He also spent the first three months of his life in leg casts and his GI issues made for a very cranky three months. Things like his eye fell out again, or can you put his eye back in, are routine sayings around our house. We've had to adapt to a "different" feeding style as he not only has a g-tube for his formula, but he has a cleft pallet. He will only take rice cereal with apples and bananas in it, WTG D! However, sometimes when he is too excited or during a very strong temper tantrum it comes out his nose. Beware if you are in his path as hubby found out, cuz he can shoot it pretty far.

Despite those things, we are constantly thinking up ways to encourage him to reach, grab, roll, stand, and sit... it's hard work. harder than I remember it of course. He may be developmentally delayed, we don't know yet, be may get a corneal transplant and see one day, we don't know yet. We do know that he is having pallet surgery and orbit expander surgeries in the near future.

We push harder for him to reach for his milestone, but mostly we just love him, cuddle him, and spoil him.

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