Is Something Not Right or is it New Mom Jitters??

You can view the past FX Memories here.

Since I was a single teen mom with no family who was real knowledgeable in babies, I educated myself on what babies were all about.  I read all the books.  I read the magazines.  The hospital had given me one magazine that outlined each month and what happened in the babies development.  It was my Bible that first year. 

When Matty was six months old he still did not roll from side to side.  Everything I read said that he should have reached that milestone.  At his 6 month checkup I asked about it.  The doctor told me that boys were typically slower than girls and that he would reach it in time.  I felt a little comforted but I was still concerned.

A couple of weeks later I had Matty laying on my lap and I was talking to him.  He looked straight at me.  I looked deep into his eyes and saw nothing.  His stare was completely vacant.  He was off somewhere else.  He wasn’t looking past me or through me.  He was just not there.  I knew then that something was not right with this child.  I didn’t know what it was but something was going on.

I went back and forth on if something was wrong or if it was just me.  I had no baby experience so I tried to chalk it up to new mom jitters.  But something was nagging at the back of my mind and I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

I voiced my thoughts to some of my family.  They told me that he was fine and I was being overly concerned.  One family member actually had the nerve to say that I wasn’t disciplining him enough.  Um.  Okay.

At Matty’s eight month check-up the doctor came in with a defeated look on his face.  He told me that Matty was falling majorly behind in his weight and length.  He said that he should have been rolling all over by this time and at least attempting to sit.  But Matty didn’t do any of that.  Matty held a gaze so he didn’t think it was autism.  He had no clue what to do, what tests to run, or where to go.  So he was sending us away.  He would make us an appointment with a pediatrician and ask for a referral to an early interventionist to test him and possibly get him physical therapy.

Talk about feeling the ultimate rejection.  I had never had a doctor quit me before!!  I cried all the way home.  And it was a 40 minute drive.  I was devastated.  My mind was all over the place at what could be wrong with my son.  I was relieved to hear that he didn’t fit the autism profile because I had heard nothing good about autism.  All the autism talk then was about how autistics didn’t show love and wouldn’t bond with their parents.  I didn’t want to lose the one family member who had loved me unconditionally up to that point. 

I went into a terribly depressive funk after that day.  Over the next few months I would whittle down to 95 pounds.  I spent many sleepless nights crying in my bathroom so Matty couldn’t hear me.  I began cutting myself after a 3 year hiatus.  I blamed myself for Matty’s problems before I even knew what Matty’s problems really were.