Myffy's Intervention

I realize once again that Myffy has been under-represented in this blog.  And that's mainly been because I've been mostly blogging about Autism (and more recently EE) here lately.  Which makes sense since it consumes my thoughts most of my waking hours.  But, well...

The thing is...

There's just no good way to say this, so I'm going to say it as plainly as I can.  Over the course of the past couple of weeks Myffy has begun to show early signs of regressive Autism.  These are the little things that we kind of noticed with Lu and allowed our pediatrician, ourselves and well meaning friends to assure us were normal and probably just a stage.  Nothing really to worry about.  All kids are different.  Kids develop at their own pace.  Etc. etc.  Little things like refusing to make eye contact.  Refusing to use words we know she can say.  Screaming over tiny things that don't quite go her way, things that wouldn't have fazed her less than a month ago.  Becoming inconsolable, refusing physical contact, refusing food, refusing nursing.  We were hoping this was all down to her being sick.  And she was really sick.  We both passed one hell of a stomach flu back and forth between us a couple of times.  But we're both over it now.  And even accounting for that, we just can't ignore these signs.  Not with knowing all we now know about the incredible differences early intervention can make.  And the earlier, the better.

So do we actually 100% know that Myffy has Autism?  No.  Are we going to start her on an intervention program anyway?  Yes!  It can't hurt her.  If anything it will just help to make sure that she acquires an age appropriate skill set in a timely fashion.  If she is actually at the very start of regressing, hopefully this will stop the backwards slide and get her moving forward again immediately.  And since having an Autistic sibling gives her a 1 in 5 chance of actually having it (as oppose to the 1 in 110 chance that every other kid born right now has) I think we'd be crazy not to be proactive here.

I'll admit that half of me crumpled over this.  Especially so soon after Lu's EE diagnosis.  Poor kids.  Poor me.  Poor Stew.  Can we really handle one more thing thrown on the pile right now?  But then we talked, and the truth is, who else is better able to handle this than we are right now?  I mean our physical, emotional and financial reserves are all low from going through this with Lu for the last year, but we've learned so much.  We have a trained team of therapists and habilitation workers who are already working with Lu.  And as of today Kris (aka Dr. G) has already started cycling Myffy through Lu's early procedures and will tailor them to Myffy.  And coincidentally Lu just grew out of the tiny Montessori table and chair Mom had gotten her ages ago and we bought a new one a few weeks ago, so today we moved the tiny table out of Lu's therapy room, replaced it with the new table, and put the old table in the dining room where Myffy worked with Kris while Jes and Kayla worked with Lu.  It's going to be hard.  It's going to be a lot of work.  But we're all set up and ready to go.