As many of you know, June 11th, 2012 was a day from hell for me. I gave birth, in the ER, to my still born twin girls. That day will NEVER leave me. It breaks my heart, every time I think about it. EVERY SINGLE TIME!
That date, also has another BIG significance to it. It's the day my daughter had her BIGGEST regression of her life. We thought it was bad when at 20 months she went from having a huge vocabulary of an ADULT, to not speaking at all, literally over night. But June 11th, put that day down as a nothing.
I remember it all too clearly. I birthed my twins at 12:02 & 12:04 am. My husband picked me up from the hospital sometime around 4-5 am, with our daughter. He had stayed home with her that night, so she could sleep. I had gone to the ER via ambulance around 8 pm. We didn't know what was wrong.
Around 11pm, my daughter had woken up, went in to lay with my husband and he knew, she sensed something was wrong. My husband was suppose to leave for work at 4:30 am, so the simple fact that he was still awake, alarmed her. As did the fact, that I wasn't there. I do ALL the night wakings when my husbands asleep.....I wake a LOT easier then he does. Anyways, she sensed something was wrong, my husband laid with her, trying to cuddle her and get her back to sleep. She wouldn't sleep. She KNEW something was wrong and she was very tense, very agitated and very upset. Nothing would calm her down. My husband assumed it was my absence Only later would we figure out that it was due to the fact that she knew something bad was happening. She laid awake all night, in my husbands arms, till I called him to come pick me up from the hospital.
When he got there, my daughter was in her car seat, wide awake with a look of shock in her eyes. It was evident, that I had been crying. She uttered one word....one simple word, that would be the word to change our worlds. "Babies?"
She knew, they were no longer in my uterus. But she didn't understand why, if I had them, they weren't coming home with me. To this day, nearly 9 months later, she still doesn't understand why they aren't here. We remember them, we treat them like family. They're in our minds, our hearts and nothing can change that. Last summer, my daughter wanted to hold a balloon release ceremony for her sisters. We did it the day after their scheduled c-section date. This year, we will be doing 3. One on the day they were born, one on their c-section date and one on their due date. May seem excessive, but for my daughter, its like buying a toy to give to her sister. Each baby gets her own balloon and my daughter writes or tells us, as best she can, what she wants it to say. To me, that means the world!
I know my daughter would have been an amazing big sister. She would have been a huge helper for mama too! But alas, she will never had that chance. With Autism, the worlds a different place. A lot of people have autism dogs, we have an autism cat. When I say that, what I mean, is that what autism dogs do for MANY people, is what this cat wound up doing for our daughter. D, is what we will call the cat for now. She's got a special name thats significant to my family and my daughter, but on here she will be D. Her birthday date, was actually the day I was schedule to have my c-section for the twins. Our daughter had always wanted a girl cat. We had two boys. She wanted a cat that was HERS. She could name it, she would be in charge of feeding it and giving it water, playing with it, all that (minus the litter box!) When I found these cats, it was perfect timing, they had just been weaned from their mother, they were 12 weeks old and after a horrible experience with our local humane society, that truly CRUSHED my daughter, we found these kittens online. Farm cats. Ready for forever homes. We showed our daughter a picture and it was the end. She fell in love with a specific one and the next day my husband and I went to get a kitten. Our daughter didn't know and she was at school. We drove over an hour out of town, into the country to FIND this farm. Praying that the kitten my daughter had chosen from the photo was still available as other people were picking up that day as well. When we got their, we got to meet the kittens, and the first one to come to us, just happened to be the one in the picture my daughter wanted. It was a sweet kitten, very cuddly, nice, and it struck us as the PERFECT cat!
It was fate, that D came into our lives. She's been a huge help for my daughter. She has helped greatly with slowing the regression, albeit, the regression is still there....she's not getting better, but at least she's leveled off, thanks to the kitten!
It's been a long hard nearly 9 months....I have worked my butt off, to get her back on the track she was one. Now I have made some amazing new contacts and I am working on getting the HELP she needs! As parents, we want to solve all of our kids problems and situations, but the reality is, when you have an autistic child, that's not possible! You need help! You need doctors, specialists, therapists, and more! You also need to NOT be afraid to ask for that help!
So far, this is a bit of behind the scenes of our experience with Regression due to loss!
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