In the last decade I have experienced just about the full gambit. From engagement to marriage; moving house and navigating married life. Realising that falling pregnant does not happen to plan or to schedule; having pregnancy and birth complications and a premature baby in NICU. Discovering my child had (has) significant developmental delays including a […]
N never had a teddy or a dudu or anything that he was specifically attached to as a small baby. He had phases of preference for various stuffed animals, but nothing really stuck until the arrival of Norman. Norman came on the scene in January 2022 – he is a small grey elephant and no, […]
There it was again. That wave that simultaneously knocks you off your feet and sucks you under the water where you can’t breathe or get your bearings. This is the thing with parenting a neurodiverse child. Your anxiety simmers constantly just at the surface, waiting for the next thing to happen. Yet, when it does […]
It has been a while. A lot has happened and unhappened. I am still wrapping my head around most of it. We started Grade 1. And like most of our journey, everything was great until it wasn’t. Around mid-February the wheels completely fell off. All the wheels. At once. A team meeting – he’s in […]
I wrote a piece in the lockdown about the importance of our “village”. This year we joined a new village as N moved into a new school for Grade R. A beautiful new community of special little people and their strong, brave parents. There is an invisible thread that connects the mothers of ‘atypical’ children […]
Once you know that your child has some sort of difficulty or challenge, no assessment or evaluation will ever feel the same way again. You will never see it in the same light as you did before and you will now experience emotions on a spectrum ranging from anxious anticipation to utter dread. You will […]
Me: “N! Guess what we are doing on Sunday? We are going to a farm to have a picnic and you can ride a horse!” N: “I don’t want to go”. Me: “But they have a trampoline!” N: “I don’t want to go to the farm” Me: “You can feed the horses and brush them” […]
As much as we were all eagerly awaiting N’s being able to express himself with words, there have certainly been moments when I’ve wished (and still wish) that he was not quite so ‘expressive’. Take our weekly outing to the shops (about 18 months ago) at a little centre packed full of friends, acquaintances and […]
Grief is not only a reaction to death; it can be a reaction to any form of loss. In this case, it is mourning the loss of an ‘ideal’. When you discover you are having a baby, you start to dream, hope and envisage the child that you will have and the life that they […]
One of the biggest (non-health related) repercussions of COVID-19 and the 2020 lockdown was the closure of schools and the subsequent remote-schooling. Although N was only just 4 at the time and not necessarily in an academically ‘essential’ phase of schooling, he went from having specialised schooling and intensive speech and occupational therapy to having […]