SkwarePegRowndHole

I feel as though I should be in confessional booth with what I’m about to type.

I am a mum to two children, who both have specific learning difficulties (dyslexia). One also has ADHD and has had anger management issues in the past, and the other has an appointment with CAMHS in a few weeks to see if the anxieties that seem to rule his life are (just) anxieties, or a symptom of autistic spectrum disorder, ADHD or something else.  I feel that you need to read those sentences in a whisper, because, surely, I must have done something wrong in pregnancy or in the way I have brought them up to have two children with moderate but significant needs.

Although, in actual fact, we have brought them up.  My husband and I are a team, and the ‘we’ also extends to close family and friends who have all been a part of the children’s lives, but I have worked part time hours since having our eldest, so I am the ‘primary carer’.  They are my life, my vocation, my career, my everything. I carried them for nine months, I grew them and gave birth to them.  I fed them for 6 months.  I made decisions about when to vaccinate.  I held them when they were ill (and they both had serious conditions when they were younger), nursed them better, cuddled them when they stank of sick. I made the choices over schools. I decided where to go on play dates, what toys to buy for Christmas and birthdays. I initiated the tests for dyslexia, for ADHD and now for whatever CAMHS brings this time.  If something was done wrong, it was done by me.

So, there you have it.  I feel guilty.  I am wracked with what ifs, why didn’t Is, why did Is and should I/could Is?

I didn’t enjoy being pregnant with either.  Is that why they have issues, because I didn’t enjoy all the time they were growing inside me? Should I have tried harder to feel the bloom?

When they were quite young, I went back to work part time.  Our eldest was left with family and our youngest at a nursery.  I went to uni when our eldest was 2, and he had to go to day nursery that he didn’t enjoy – is that why he has anger issues now?  Our youngest was in nursery 2 days a week from being just 9 months old – is that why he gets so anxious now?

Should I have eaten more/less oily fish when I was pregnant? Did I accidently eat blue cheese? Did I have a glass of wine? Did I, should I, could I…….the list of questions is endless.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t change my boys for anything.  I wouldn’t take the dyslexia away, as it makes their minds think like there is no box.  I wouldn’t take the ADHD away as it makes our eldest very practical and ‘doing’.  He likes to fiddle, to take things to bits and put them back together.  He is incredible musical and artistic, and we have yet to find a sport he cannot do. I wouldn’t even take the anxieties that seem to take over our family most evenings at 9.30 pm as they make our youngest an incredibly empathetic, caring individual, with a brain that just cannot slow down, even at bed time when all the thoughts from the day fuzz up his relaxation and take over. A brain that asks questions such as ‘Do you think infinity is a number or a time reference?’, and gets frustrated that they haven’t found a cure for cancer. ‘Why haven’t they? Why can’t they all just work together and sort it out?’.

So I wouldn’t change them, I wouldn’t do anything differently if I had my time again, but that doesn’t stop the guilt, or the worry or the what if’s. It doesn’t stop me replaying stuff I have done in the past and wonder what difference that’s made.  It doesn’t stop me lying in bed at 3am wondering what I can do now to help them now.

Baby books tell you nothing about things like this, about how to deal with the day to day problems and issues kids like mine face.  I know that compared to many parents my problems are tiny, but they are there, and they keep me awake, keep me worrying and keep me feeling guilty that I may have done something to contribute to all this.

However, we will continue to embrace and celebrate everything that they are, and keep chanting our mantra:

Why be ordinary when you can be extraordinary?