Mama Gut...

This is a thing. Mama Gut. Even when it comes to "professionals". Now do not get me wrong, I trust the medical field. I always have and always will. They do some amazing things and save lives daily, which is miraculous in itself. I trust our family pediatrician, Alley's developmental pediatrician and his therapists that they know what is best for my son in their field of expertise. With that being said, I have learned that they are not the experts in EVERY field.

This is where my focus has shifted with our son. I was feeling pretty hopeless and beat up this year when it came to Autism. I felt like it had won. Our sweet and loving Alley had taken a turn to an angry, rigid, aggressive child and we were at a loss. He was uncomfortable in his own skin and agitated all the time. Things that were his "preferreds" had ways of upsetting him when they usually made him happy. It was stressful, it was gut wrenching and it was an ugly time in our house for about six months.

In April of this year, we were at a loss. He was biting other people and self harming himself. Talk about your heart as a parent shattering into a million pieces, watching your son self harm is truly that.We set up an appointment with his developmental pediatrician because something needed to be done. He couldn't keep living like this, we couldn't keep living like this. He saw Alan and decided it was time to try conventional medication with him. The doctor gave us the statistics, what to watch for as far as side effects, the whole nine yards. We joked and laughed that Alley was going to be in the tiny percentage of children that have an adverse reaction to this particular medication. Jokes on us, it happened. We lost our boy even more, which we didn't think was possible. He ha meltdowns, I mean full meltdowns that lasted hours. Biting himself, coming after us, it was beyond brutal.

My husband and I decided we are done with that particular med after three days of this awful behavior. We called the doctor and he said to stop it immediately. We then tried a second med, and it was a little less of a terrible situation. But my husband and myself both were uncomfortable with him being on it long term, because we were not seeing the results that were promised. We really did try, we had him on it for about three to four weeks before we decided to ween him off. This was into May coming up on June and my mama gut told me, this was not the path for our son. We needed to do more, but this was not his journey. Some people had wonderful experiences with conventional medication and that is amazing! It was just not in the cards for out Alley.

One night, in our kitchen after the boys went to bed, Al and I had heart to heart about where to go from here and what was our next route. We took on this role of being researchers and students of Autism at this point. Both of us literally becoming sponges and absorbing anything that could possibly help our son in a non-conventional way. We are still new to this way of living, and navigating it as we go. I am pleased to say we are still on this path we started back in June and it has helped our son tremendously.Yes, it is a lot more work on us. Yes, it is a lot more expensive because insurance does not cover any of it. BUT if we can help our boy and create a life for him that he is comfortable in, then we will do it all. Trust your Mama Gut and do not be afraid to pivot.

More to come on this path, stay tuned.

With grace,

This Autism Mama