It's 2:30am, and I can't sleep (it seems a lot of my blog posts are a result of insomnia!). Four years ago exactly I was tossing and turning as well. I was in the hospital, extremely pregnant and with my waters broken, waiting for my baby to make his or her long awaited entrance into the world. I wasn't in labour, just being monitored and watching for pot to boil, so to speak. I didn't have a private room so James had been sent home and told to come back if I made any progress (you can guess how much sleep HE had that night...zero!). I was so excited (I'm going to be a MOM!!) and nervous (this thing is coming out of me, and I'm going to be solely in charge of it! Are they nuts??!?). Of course that "thing" turned out to be Emmett, who finally arrived on the scene around dinner time that day. It was an exhausting and emotional day, and I will never forget the moment I looked at my son for the first time, saw he was a boy and James and I said to each other "Emmett! We have a little boy, Emmett!".
Now I'm up again in the middle of the night, after another long and exhausting day. We had the family conference to wrap up Emmett's assessments and get a diagnosis. Essentially, Emmett is about 25 months old mentally. He is severely delayed in his communication and learning. We're not sure why, but we suspect the cause may be genetic. We will probably be undergoing some genetic testing to see if we can isolate the cause.
I'm still processing everything...a lot of the behaviors that I'm concerned about, and that were leading me to believe he may have a form of autism, could be explained by the fact that mentally he's only 2. They aren't totally ruling autism out at this point but right now he doesn't meet the criteria for that diagnosis. We also aren't sure what this means long term...he will continue to progress but he has been classed as having below average intelligence and will probably never fully catch up to his peers.
So that's where we're at right now. Obviously, it's upsetting news and not what we wanted to hear, but it's reality. The good (great!) news is, Emmett has been blessed with SO many family and friends that love him and will support him. He's in a great program with excellent teachers and other professionals. He's got all the tools he's going to need to live up to his full potential in life, whatever that may be. We are clearly living in the "right" place, at the "right" time...there are so many programs and resources we can access.
Today is Emmett's birthday, and we are going to celebrate him. He has changed my life forever, and if I had the choice of doing it all over again, I would without a doubt. That sweet child is and always has been a huge blessing to our family, and I love him for exactly who he is.
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