I changed my mind and had Wyatt diagnosed last week. He was not diagnosed as autistic, although he still has one major red flag on his MCHAT (Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers) form. The MCHAT is a screening, not a diagnostic form. On the CARS (Childhood Autism Rating Scale) form, he scored 21.5. That is well below the cut-off of 30. The lowest possible score on the CARS is 15. What means more to me than the diagnosis is the evidence of progress that Wyatt has made. Six months ago according to the DP-3 form, he was two standard deviations below the mean in the categories of social/emotional and communication. He was one standard deviation below the mean in the cognitive and adaptive behavior categories. Now on that same form, he is average in the cognitive and adaptive behavior categories. He is still delayed in the social/emotional and communication categories, but he is just one standard deviation below the mean in those areas now. He is in the process of healing, and the doctor validated that. She told me that what I have been doing for him is working. His two primary interventions have been SCD (Specific Carbohydrate Diet) and DIR/Floortime.

Life interrupted my plans to release the first chapter of The Myth of Merula by the end of the year. Wyatt, now almost two years old, had been showing some red flags for autism. Some interventions were in order for him. He needed major dietary changes, requiring lots of cooking from scratch. He also needs lots and lots of interaction and play. When I haven’t been cooking or playing with him, I have often been online doing research related to autism, especially biomedical treatment of it.

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I’m now halfway through month eight of new mommydom, and I’m getting my head above water and coming up for air. Wyatt is now happily creeping backwards around the kitchen and living room floors. The baby who always wanted to be held is now the baby who bucks in my arms when he wants to be put down. The baby who needed me to provide him with some sort of stimulating change every five minutes is now the baby who can spend a half hour to an hour at a time on the floor with the same collection of objects. I’m now in a position to review my practice of attachment parenting and conclude that it has lived up to at least one of its selling points, to my great relief. Dr. Sears and other proponents have long claimed that attachment parenting results in kids that are more, not less, independent. continue reading »

It’s not even one month since I wrote the last post on attachment parenting, and already my thoughts are different. They’re not totally different, but I’ve further refined and qualified the insight from The Continuum Concept about not being child centered. Previously I had decided to let Wyatt whine more often. Now I’m working harder to keep him constantly stimulated. I don’t believe this will spoil him, and I think the effort will be worth it.

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Now that my son is five months old, I have had more opportunities to learn and reflect, and I’ve decided that I’m not as attached to attachment parenting as I used to be. If I erred, though, at least I erred on the side of babying my baby too much rather than too little. He’s only five months old, and I’m glad he got through his early, fussy months without crying very much. In a nutshell, however, I have come to believe AP can be bad for both the baby and the parents if it is taken to an extreme or misapplied. Why? Because a baby needs a happy Mommy and Daddy. Time to stop living our lives in fear of the fussies!

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Maybe I’m dense, but it took me two months to realize I have a high need baby. He’s the only baby I’ve ever had. Since having Wyatt, I have been in awe of my mother and grandmother for having four and nine children respectively. They had natural labors and stayed home with all their kids. My mother breastfed all of us. But my mother started making comments, like, “Does he always nurse so frequently?” When I replied defensively that the hospital lactation consultant said it was normal for Wyatt to go through marathon feeding sessions during growth spurts, she said, “I don’t remember the marathon feeding.” I kept quiet about my own nervous thought that Wyatt nearly always seemed to be going through a growth spurt. continue reading »

My four week old son, Wyatt, sleeps in his peanut shell sling, nestled against my body, as I type. Today is a milestone, the first time I have gotten him to accept being worn in the sling. I sit at my desk in the living room, watching the snow fall gently off the trees in the backyard. The whole house is peaceful, and I feel good to be on my computer and to have Wyatt nestled against me at the same time. I feel as if everything is going to work out now.

It took a while to get to this point. The first couple of days home with Wyatt were the most desperate, overwhelmed and exhausted days I have ever experienced in my life. I knew about the “baby blues”, but they had conjured up a vague image of a new mother sitting next to a tiny, sleeping baby in a frilly white bassinet, eating chocolate, crying about being fat. I hadn’t known that “baby blues” really translated into feeling as if I would never be able to go to the bathroom, eat, sleep or shower again. continue reading »

This August, my husband and I finally made a trip out to Glacier National Park, as we’ve wanted to do for several years. Since I’m now 20 weeks pregnant, I’m glad we had our babymoon while we could! We had four bear sightings, three mountain goat sightings and a bighorn sheep sighting. Pictures are on Flickr. Going to the Sun Road was spectacularly scenic, in spite of the haze from the enormous forest fire in neighboring Idaho. We enjoyed our trip, but it was also tiring doing all that driving, so we also enjoyed coming home. I’m ready now to take nothing but short trips for the next couple of years, which is the perfect feeling to have with a baby on the way. Some day, when our baby is old enough, we’ll all go back out West as a family, even if we have to ride our bikes out there due to the price of gas!
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It’s hard to believe this is the first blog post I’ve written since April. I’ve been knee-deep in living several dreams at the same time, besides being bitten hard by spring fever. Throughout half of April and most of May, I spent most of my free time outside. Every week-end I worked outside made my weight drop by two pounds — an added bonus. Plus, my mornings are now spent exercising, not drinking coffee while feverishly working on my computer until the last possible minute before I have to get ready for work — which was how I created most of my Web Site design. It’s hard to have balanced, healthy habits while working full-time and fleshing out a fictional Web Site part-time. continue reading »

This year, I’ve begun to have a welcome yet unfamiliar feeling. It’s the feeling of doing what I want. It will take some getting used to it. In addition to gaining something from it – relief, satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment – I have also lost something. I’ve lost the entirely dreamlike status of my goals. When goals are dreamlike, it’s as if they exist in a warm womb. Now I’m much more conscious of all of the work that I need to do in the present, and I don’t dream about the future quite as much. In addition, of course, I’ve had to take the risk of finding out that what I accomplish will not live up to my own expectations and hopes. That’s what happens when you’re livin’ the dream.

There are times when I wonder if I want to do all the work I will need to do. There are times I wonder if I can. At such times, three thoughts help me immensely. The first thought is that I will be doing all the work incrementally. continue reading »