Birth & Parenting Series

This is our 21st guest post in the Birth & Parenting Series. The other 20 guest writers’ stories may be found here. Contact me (wholeparenting@gmail.com) anytime if you’d like to share your story of your child’s arrival, or a parenting perspective. Today’s writer shares her birth story of her son. Jenni bravely faced a long labor and when she finally met her son it was a real gift and celebration! — I woke up at 2:00 am on Friday, March 2, 2012 with contractions.  I had been having contractions all week around this time.  Except, this time, they were different.  These contractions were uncomfortable.  With my husband sleeping next to me, I started timing the contractions using an app on my phone.  The doctor wanted us to call when the contractions were 1 minute long, occurring every 5 minutes.  I timed them. They lasted at least one minute long and were anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes apart.  I calmly woke my husband and told him I thought I was in labor.  So we called the doctor.  The doctor told us to head to the hospital; at worst, they would send us home.  He would call ahead to let them know we were coming.  This was at 4:00 am. Part of me was still in denial that I was in labor. We took our time to pack the hospital bag.  Yes, we were a little behind in doing this.  After all, the baby wasn’t due for another 5 days.  I…

This is the final segment written by a guest writer whose son has been diagnosed with a form of Autism. See part 1 here, and part 2 here. This last segment gives concrete guidance for parents going through the system and provides a number of very helpful tips, including an online support group founded by our writer! Programs That Help But how do you get help for an autistic child? We had insurance through the state of Wisconsin (Badgercare) which has vouchers to pay for special help for children who have Autism … but there’s about a 1.5 year waiting period to get a voucher and a long application process. We figured by that time he’d have been in school long enough he should get help from the school district. We also figured we would no longer be on Badgercare by the time a voucher became available. The good news is there’s something called a Katie Beckett program in our state that can “divorce” your special needs child from your insurance if you find that they need more help than your insurance pays for and he or she can go on Wisconsin’s plan. We did not pursue that because we did not think his needs were severe enough to warrant a voucher. The rules are you must get 40 hours of services per week for young children and 20 hours for school-aged children and we knew he’d be too exhausted to be helped by services after a full school day.…

This is a continuation of our guest post on a mother’s perspective on her young son’s autism diagnosis. Read part 1 here. Read all our Birth & Parenting Series here. Contact me if you want to share your story! —- How the Diagnosis Works When we took our son for his physical in June, we mentioned our concerns to our family doctor.  She immediately referred us to the pediatric neurologist.  We were very lucky to see her within two weeks, and after a meeting with her, she sent us to the psychologist who was the expert in autism for a screening.  We were able to see him relatively quickly, too, and by mid-summer, we had an answer: he was autistic, but not classically so. When you get an autism diagnosis, there are several different “categories” you can get, the most known are Autism, Asperger’s, and PDD-NOS (Pervasive Development Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified).  Our son was PDD-NOS because he was similar to the children who were fully autistic, but had some differences.  For example, he is not particularly interested in the wheels on a car and does not have an overwhelming need to put things in order.  He is also highly imaginative.  But he does not seem to grasp social skills and has other things he does in common with the autistic children, such as liking to spin or twirl his body when he gets a little overwhelmed.  The newest DSM-V will actually collapse all of these developmental disorders under “Autism”…

This is part 19 in our Birth & Parenting Series where mamas & papas share either about their birthing experience or parenting perspective. Please let us know if you’d like to join in the conversation. All our series can be found on the sidebar, or at this link, here. This incredibly brave family endured a horrifically difficult entry into the world of their second daughter, but with grace and amazing heart, their sweet little girl makes it. Thank God for great doctors and nurses and miracles. ————— I had dreamed about Harper’s birth story since the day I found out she existed. After all, my firstborn, Elle, came into this world with a vengeance at 36 weeks. (I’ll spare the details but the story of Elle and I began with many unpleasant things, i.e., HELLP syndrome, sunny-side up, post partum hemorrhage, transfusion, retained placenta, D&C). So, I naturally I believed that things were guaranteed to be comparatively smoother the second time around. I could not wait to meet weeks 37, 38, 39, and even week 40; to pack my own hospital bag; to count and time contractions; to possibly try an all natural birth (ok, I would have for sure ended up with an epidural but I liked they idea of having a choice in the matter) – all experiences I had been swiftly robbed of via Elle’s emergency induction. I was blissfully pregnant with baby #2 at 29 weeks, still working, feeling as well as one can. I had…