From Discovery to Diagnosis: How I Learned Both of My Children Had Autism
Stephanie Hanrahan retains all rights to this article, which was first published on Tinkles Her Pants.
It’s fair to say all moms are overworked and underpaid. That’s just part of the contract that involves caring for little people. But what no one really signs up for is overtime, and that’s what I got. Double overtime actually.
Also known as two children with special needs…
Read MoreOn April 9th, 2019, Sloan LouElla was born! After 9 years of marriage + fur-baby-parenting, we were adulting to our max capacity (joking, haha, does anybody actually do that?)...and we were excited for our little human-baby. We had prepared, prepared, and prepared. We started a ‘baby box’ in 2016 - just collecting little things for our future human while we were out traveling, shopping, etc - and we were ready for what we thought was going to be a very typical birth/baby experience. After an extremely intense, traumatic, beautiful, life-altering year - we’ve learned that while preparation is wonderful, some of the most amazing, life-altering experiences come from the moments you least expect.
Read MoreOn February 9, 2018 in the late evening and two weeks early - our second daughter, Bryn Ryan Cotant was born and then rushed to the NICU. We were only able to see her for 22 seconds, as she was born in stress with the softest cry and immediately passed over to be evaluated. After what felt like days, even though it was only a few hours, we were finally able to go see her. As my husband, Kris, and I took turns holding her, praying over her and loving on her, we, of course, could sense that things were not totally okay.
Read MoreAfter a very normal pregnancy, and semi-normal birth on February 22, 2016, Leo made his way into the world. After the first couple of days my husband and I started to worry that something wasn't quite right. Leo was unable to keep his temperature up and had an odd jerking movement that we noticed. The doctors all brushed us off and insisted nothing was wrong, we were just paranoid new parents. So we took him home and tried to ignore our guts. After just a few days home we couldn't take it anymore. We knew in our hearts something just wasn't right. We took him straight to the children's hospital that was an hour away and hoped they would listen. And thankfully, they did.
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