We Have a Communication Book

    I wasn't sure how well the idea would be embraced. I was in half-minds as to whether we needed a Communication Book or not. For those who don't know, a Communication Book goes from home to school. Ideally, notes are written in it each day. That way the teacher knows how Madd's been at home, and I know about any issues that arise at school.

    Today I wrote my first note in it. Letting the teacher know how Madd had been the night before and that morning, and about how I hoped that this book would help us communicate since Madd is now in afterschool care 3 days a week.

     I got it back today with a note letting me know that she'd had a MUCH better day than yesterday, but that she has an ongoing issue with a particular boy in the class with whom she clashes constantly. They sit and niggle at each other until it escalates. The teacher has recognised the problem and has permanently separated them in class. It's nice to know these things. It also lets me know that I should have a better time tonight with Madd, since she had a calm day at school.

It's just nice to know what happens with her at school, it's opened the lines of communication a bit more.

Another Shit Day

Anddddddddd after a weekend of nothing but meltdowns, Madd was made to stand up at the end of school and apologise to her whole class. She was apparently sitting there and poking anyone who was sitting near her, and annoying them. Apparently she spent most of today annoying the rest of her class. Her excuse? She was bored and was sick of sitting on the mat. She has a provisional dx of ADHD and Aspergers. How do I handle this?? I sent her with sensory toys a couple of months ago, but she had them taken off her for "mucking around with them" (she was swinging one of them around and it was dangerous for others around her). The teacher has said to Madd that it's "bad behaviour, and if she does it tomorrow she'll be sent to the principal's office".
Should they be more understanding, or are they on the right track? It's so hard to distinguish naughty behaviour from needing help and intervention. She knows that annoying the other kids is wrong, but what if she really couldn't help it because she needed to get off that mat and COULDNT rather than WOULDNT sit still?? Advice and opinions needed please! All comments welcome.

I don't know how I should be handling this. I've always assumed that she can control her "bad behaviour", but what if she genuinely can't? Should the school be trying other options, of maybe giving her some time-out in another part of the school? Maybe sending her to the principal's office would give her the time-out she needs??

I'm devastated, because we've now had 5 days of meltdowns (other than while she was with mum for 12 hours). Those 12 hours, she wasn't made to do anything. She could do whatever she wanted, and didn't have to go to bed on time or brush her teeth or get dressed on time.

So what do I do? I really am at a loss as to what to expect from her, and how much of her behaviour is under her control.

My life at the moment - anxiety, depression, bullying, autism, and ... everything else

    I know, not a very catchy blog title.
Anxiety, depression, bullying, autism and everything else.

Anxiety depression and bullying all relate to me. I have major anxiety at the moment, to the point that I had a panic attack on Thursday because I didn't want to face the bullying that I'm copping at placement at the moment.

There's a lady at the place I'm doing my TAFE placement who is giving me a hard time. Not to my face, mind you - behind my back. This is bullying of the WORST kind. She has said things in a staff meeting about me, complete and utter lies. Saying that I was being "unprofessional" (I won't give more detail, it's insulting). So I'm quite upset. She also put me in a position that could have injured a client or myself, because she asked me to do something that she was well aware of me not knowing how to do. Then when she was questioned by another staff member, she rudely replied that she was coming back to help me. It was quite clear to both myself and the other staff member that she wasn't.

So between that and the lies she's spreading about me, I'm feeling very stressed. I know that her opinion and lies don't mean anything, and it shouldn't be getting to me.
But with my history of depression, it's getting to me quite a lot.
But I think the main reason I'm having issues with it more than I should be is because I don't understand why she's doing it. I mean, I don't know her. I've never met her before. I haven't done anything wrong, or been rude to her, or done ANYTHING that could have upset or angered her.

So I'm having panic attacks now. I don't even get PAID for placement, it's all volunteer time for my course. Because the lies about me were told at a staff meeting (I obviously wasn't at that meeting because I'm not paid staff), I shouldn't know about them. A few people in the meeting were concerned about me, I haven't been looking "happy" at work, I've looked pretty miserable some days apparently, even though I've tried to look happy despite everything that's going on. So they told me what had been said in the meeting.

Since then, I haven't been handling things very well. I think it's because things have been said about me to the WHOLE STAFF that I wasn't aware of. The fact that the boss didn't call me into the office to speak to me means that the boss either doesn't believe this woman or doesn't think it's a big deal.

I reported the safety incident to the boss last week. I actually reported the "gossip" incident too, but I'm not sure if it was before or after the staff meeting. Making sure I'm covering my own butt here, because I know I've done nothing wrong.

So I'm off to the doctors this week to see if I can get something to help with the anxiety. I can't handle it any more, and it's starting to really affect me.

Madd has a curriculum day off school tomorrow. She had a late night on Friday night. She was MEANT to have a sleepover with a girl at our place on Saturday night, but I cancelled. She spent the whole weekend melting down over one thing after the other. She's at Mum's tonight since there's no school tomorrow and I have placement. I'm dreading going back to placement, I get extremely anxious and start to panic every time I think about it.

So... life isn't very easy right now. Can't do much about anything that's going on, but I just needed to vent.

Ed Sheeran.... do I need to say more?

   Apparently I do need to say more, because I just can't help myself.
From the first time I heard "Lego House", I was hooked. I listened to a couple of his other songs, then decided I had to have the album. It was worth every cent.

    For those who have been living under a rock, Ed Sheeran is an awesome guy from England. He has spunky red hair, dresses like a regular guy, seems pretty down-to-earth, has many guitars, and an amazing voice. I think he's technically classed as a "folk" singer, whatever that means. I just know he's got amazing talent, and judging by his concert sales he's going to go very far.

     I hadn't heard his music before the 2012 concert had been long sold out.
Tickets for his March 5th 2013 went on sale at 9am this morning. They were sold out by 9.01am. I did everything humanly possible to get a ticket - I sat on the computer and refreshed the screen every time it loaded from 8:55am until 9:00am when my computer said the tickets were now for sale. I filled the stuff out as quick as possible, and... SOLD OUT.
Ed Sheeran took 1 minute to sell an entire concert out.

     I didn't realise until about an hour ago that at 9:15am this morning, a second concert was released for March 6th 2013. As soon as I realised, I was devastated. I figured the second concert would also be sold out and that I'd totally missed the boat.  I logged on just in case, and BAM! I had tickets!

Absolutely stoked that I got tickets. My sister Kim and I are going tosee him, and I can't wait! It's totally made my day. I was having a really crappy day, but it just got a whole lot better :)

FUCK YOU AUTISM... and shame on me too

    Tonight is just a really really shitty night.
The kids ran out of toothpaste last night, so I bought them some more today. I bought the same tube for Cooper as before, and bought Madd the next one up; the one for "big teeth".
     BIG MISTAKE.

Because Madd is so high-functioning, I take it for granted sometimes that she'll just adapt to things. So, without thinking, I assumed the new toothpaste would be fine. It wasn't.

She's been melting down for over an hour now. I told her that she didn't have to brush her teeth tonight, and she could wait til tomorrow night when I've had a chance to find the "right toothpaste".
I really don't want to write much about it, I'm exhausted after 2 hours of meltdown. But I ended up pinning her on my lap and putting Nick JR on the tv to calm her down. It worked, and about 10 minutes later she was calm enough to talk again.

Note to self (and to everyone else) - just because a child is "high functioning" autism, never assume that they don't have needs and issues. She still has issues, and sensory problems. It's not as cut and dry as it sounds - "High-functioning " or "Aspergers" doesn't mean that life is easy for her (or us), she just has different problems to others on the spectrum.

I Want to Write a Book about Aspergers

I really want to write a book on Aspergers Syndrome.
As someone who's finally got a provisional diagnosis for their child, I think I've just about heard it all....
"She can't have Aspergers. She doesn't toe-walk or flap, and she has eye contact"
"But she talks too well. She looks normal"
"Ohhh, so you finally got a "label" for her"
"Everyone's got a label these days, don't they"

I know people don't really know what to say, but it's not comforting to be told over and over that they don't "get it", and they don't understand because "she seems so normal". She's an amazing kid with a lot of social/emotional/behavioural problems that she hides extremely well. I've been told for a long time that she'll grow out of the "bad behaviour". She hasn't.

There's a good saying out there, one that's very well-known in the Asperger/Autism world.
"Once you've known a child with autism, you know one child with autism."

In other words, not all autistic kids are the same. Some flap, some don't. Some talk, some don't.
There were a lot of signs with Madd, that I saw but no one else did. I let everyone convince me that she was normal and she'd just "grow out of it". I should have listened to my inner voice that was screaming at me.

I want to write a book about being a parent to an aspie child, especially an aspie girl. Girls are very different to boys, and Aspiegirls are usually very different to Aspieboys. In this book, I also want to have a list of online/offline places that you should go to get help/support when you think your child has autism/aspergers, or after you get a diagnosis. There isn't really any one place to get all that information that's easy to find when you need it.

So.... that's my long-term plan. Hopefully I'll get somewhere with it.

Happy Birthday Cooper

     This time 2 years ago, I was in labour with Cooper. I wasn't progressing, and they were deciding whether or not I'd need to have an emergency c-section.  At 10:55pm, Cooper was born through an emergency c-section.
At 10:57pm, I got to see my son's face. They brought him over, but I was feeling very sick and dizzy. I remember saying to the anaesthetist "I don't want to see him. I'm starting to panic, you need to knock me out, you need to knock me out, now, now now, please." To which he rapidly complied.

I didn't know at the time, but at 10:56pm, I started dying.

    They kicked Ash and Cooper out of the operating room, and sent them back to my room in Maternity. Ash didn't get any news about me for 4 hours.

      Humans have 5 to 6 litres of blood. I lost 4.
I had a Class IV haemorrhage and hypovolemia. I nearly died.
      At 2:45am, I awoke feeling  very groggy. At around 3am, they told Ash that I was going to live.
At 4am, I was wheeled back to my room and I got to see Ash. I was drifting in and out with the morphine drip they had me on. I was in a lot of pain, and was pushing the button every 5 minutes (that was the minimum wait time). What they failed to tell me at the time was that morphine can cause an ileus (shut-down bowel).

    For the next couple of days, I was feeling pretty good. I had visitors, I got up and walked around, I even saw Coopman go under the lights (jaundice). 
Then it all fell apart.

    When my bowel shut down, it was the worst pain in the world. There's a lot more to it, but I'm not up to writing it all now. They sent Cooper home with my mum when he was a few days old, because they knew I'd be there for quite awhile. Ash needed to be at the hospital, because I couldn't make any decisions; I was too out of it. Madd got sent off to the inlaws.

     They said to me that the recovery was going to be at least 12 months. I laughed at the time, I didn't believe that it would be that long.

    24 months later, and I still have some recovering to do. Some bits and pieces of my body aren't quite back to normal yet, but they're getting there. I've come a hell of a long way in those 24 months. I had post-traumatic stress disorder, and was seeing a shrink and taking antidipressants. That helped a hell of a lot.

   These days I'm medication-free. I don't smoke. I rarely drink. I love both my kids. I have finally bonded with Madd. A few months ago, I got my memory back- for the first 18 months, I didn't remember any of the pregnancy, labour, or anything after that. I couldn't look back beyond a month. Now life is looking a lot better.

    So a big happy birthday to my baby boy Cooper... not such a baby any more. And congratulations to Ash, Madd Cooper and I for being a happy, healthy family. We very nearly weren't.

As much as I know it's Coop's big day today, it will also always be a reminder of how much I nearly lost, and how I should keep looking forward and enjoying life.