And W is 10!

About 10 years ago today probably the hardest thing in my life happened.
10 years ago today I was discharged from hospital a week after giving birth to our first child - and we had to leave him behind.
10 years ago today W got moved out of an incubator into a cot and got dressed for the first time. I helped dress him and move him - and then had to walk out and leave him.

Through part of my pregnancy I had this cute little fantasy of nudging P at some point in the night, "Honey, it's time!" Who knows how many people really get to do it that way??!!

But for me it was all a rush of urgency, panic and total unpreparedness. P was even out of town - W wasn't due for another 7 weeks after all!

I hadn't been feeling great but not terrible either and certainly didn't suspect when I turned up for 'monitoring' with my midwife that in fact I wouldn't go home without giving birth.

But pre-eclampsia is a mysterious and lethal beast and so I was actually seriously ill and both W and I were in danger of losing our lives.

Within about 4 hours of turning up to the hospital W was born and P and I were first time parents to this tiny little being wired up to all sorts of machinery and with tubes sprouting from him. We did actually sit by his incubator later in the week and debate if he looked more like a rat or a monkey - all 3lb 14 oz of him!

It's amazing to think of the roller coaster we have been on in our parenting ever since the initial crash landing. It doesn't get any easier outside the NICU - W behaved himself there!
It was only once he got home at 3 weeks old that the fun started with reflux, apnea episodes, feeding refusal, low weight gains, the wondrous term FTT - Failure To Thrive, developmental delays, Sensory Integration dysfunction, possible mild CP. He went through a stage of collecting diagnoses and I felt like they were stripping my child away from me, what was going to be left after they told me what was wrong?!

Of course I did come to the realisation that in fact the diagnoses didn't change the little boy I had in front of me - except to make it easier to help him. Having made that mental leap certainly helped as trouble rolled in with N, and W's later Asperger's diagnosis.

These days W is a great kid. I was talking to his soccer coach the other day and he was saying you'd never know W had an issue. Then we went to a home school activity and W had absolutely no idea of how to break into a conversation, start a conversation or even play with the other kids. Meanwhile N is racing round talking to everyone and making friends. T ran out of energy and sat and cried - but that's another issue!

As I watched W the pain of watching him struggle at playgroups, kindy and later school all came flooding back. Yes, he's doing well in terms of being happy, rolling with the changes in routine, doing pretty well at his school work, happy in his soccer and swimming, enjoying piano, interacting with family and familiar adults - but throw him back into a noisy, semi chaotic situation where you have to cope socially as well as cope with the lights, noise and movement and he sinks fast. You could see him shut down. So we've found out about a social group run by our local Autistic Association and we're going to sign him up! He has commented before how he likes being with "his people". That hurts me, although it shouldn't I guess, but it feels like a rejection of all the work I've done to help him, like I've forced him into something he isn't. I know it's for his own good - isn't that a phrase we hear far too often - but is needed for any success in adult life.

W has come so far from that tiny technology dependent baby, that toddler who wouldn't eat and ran screaming from a plate of food, and that child we rescued from the h*ll school had become - to the extend that he was saying he'd rather be dead and had planned it all out.

I love him and I love the wonderful, responsible, mature young man he's growing into.
I can see he's a fragile flower and I do fear for how he's going to cope with adult life, work and relationships, but all I can do right now is to keep throwing opportunities his way and keep handing him and teaching him the tools he'll need on his path so that hopefully, once I can't be there to guide him, he can remember a bit of how to do it himself.