Hi all..
You can absolutely judge me. I genuinely feel like the worst parent in the world right now.
My DS is 4. He has multiple diagnoses, including autism. He's happy, healthy, and loved, but it's been difficult from being absolutely gaslighted by medical professionals to going through many tests and assessments, 100s of appointments, etc. It's been hard. It still is. He's struggling, and we're waiting to see if he'll get into SEN school, which I imagine will be another uphill battle, but it is what it is.
Before all this started, though, we had another baby. There's 21 months between them, so I didn't have another baby knowing we already had a disabled child - they were signs but nothing solid and nothing to indicate how severe they'd be. If I had known, I wouldn't have had another child ( I'm glad I did. I love them both to pieces).
DD is 2. She was an easy baby really but showed some similar signs to DS, but the hardest thing was she was extremely delayed - she didn't sit up, crawl, wean, walk, etc, until she was 14-21 months old although she has started to regress.
We had her tested for the same disability my DS has, and it came back negative, and I'm ashamed to say this, but I was so happy, I thought that meant we could expirence having a non disabled child ( I genuinely feel disgusting saying that ).
When my son was having his autism assessment, we had a home visit from the specialist HV, who mentioned DD and said to see the HV as soon as she turns two as she is also showing signs.
We have raised our concerns as has nursery, and she is under physiotherapy, portage, neuro paediatrician, specialist teacher at school, and probably speech and language in the future so I am on the ball with it and trying my best.
DD is difficult, but what 2 years old isn't? However, I'm awake and really upset because when the HV saw her, she agreed with everything we've said and referred her to all these services, and today, the specialist teacher saw her, and said she can see exactly what we and nursey are talking about which of course she does but I fully convinced myself she would observe her and be like " she's fine" and all our concerns would be squished.
I guess I'm just facing reality now, but i just don't know what the future holds with two potentially disabled children. It's just not what I imagined, and I'm just feeling really low that we're going to have to go through it all again and then obviously go through the rest of our lives with it.
I just, I don't know, I really hate myself at the moment because I love them both so much no matter what, but it's hard.