Fast forward to October 2014 and we received the extremely exciting news that we were finally expecting baby #3! To say we were excited would be an understatement. We felt rejuvenated as a family; not to mention rejuvenated in our marriage. Parents of children with autism are 3 times as likely to divorce than parents with typical kids - considering the divorce rate is 50%, this is a large number. But now we had our baby - and he was a BOY. Three crazy boys and they were ours. Is anything better?
As parents of a child with autism and now going on 5 years of experience with this disorder (or whatever it is) we knew the statistics of possibly having another child with special needs - we had a 15%+ chance of having a child with autism - and it went up to 26% because we were expecting a boy(a girl would have dropped us down to 8%, that is how gender linked this disorder is, these are Mayo Clinic numbers). We knew what we were getting into when the test results came back and we found out we were having a boy - if we were shying away from that possibility we would not have tried for or even attempted to try another child.
June 24, 2015 arrived and so did our Sammy. The day, the night, everything about his arrival was perfect. But immediately, and I mean immediately after Sam was born, I started screening him for autism. Now...sanity check here, you cannot tell if a newborn has autism or not. It's impossible. But when he was about 6 hours old I started checking for eye contact and his ability to scan objects.
I was testing to see if his eyes would follow my finger from right to left - it was insane...picture me, in a hospital bed, sitting with this tiny infant on my lap running my finger from right to left asking if he "saw it?!" One of my nurses, lovingly, told me to "get a grip."
We brought Sam home and eventually settled into a routine. When Sam was approximately 5 months old, and after countless "right to left" scanning experiments and paranoia about eye contact, I made an appointment with a pediatric neurologist.
Brody's neurologist no longer accepts new patients, so I made an appointment with his partner, Dr. Denis Altman in St. Louis.
The day of the appointment arrived; we both cleared our schedules and drove to Mercy Hospital. We brought our Sammy into the waiting room and I refused to take the stroller because I wanted to carry him. I was bracing myself for terrible news, maybe he has it? Maybe the stats are right and now Sammy has autism? It will be ok....
We sat and sat and waited for what seemed like forever, but it was maybe 20-30 minutes; Dr. Altman was running behind...that's cool..."he's a neurologist, he could be in surgery." So, no biggie.
Dr. Altman eventually opened the door to the waiting room and yelled with a bellowing voice,
"Welcome Bolands! Let's see the baby!" Dr. Altman opened the door for us and immediately grabbed Sam from my arms.
We walked into his examination room, and with Sam in his arms, he shut to door, and looked right at us,
"I know why you are here. And your baby is fine."
The relief swept over bodies like a tidal wave and we burst into tears.
Dr. Altman was watching us in the waiting room for the entire 20-30 minutes - he saw how Sam was interacting with us and smiling, not to mention he looked right at us when we spoke to each other. He said he could tell from the moment we walked into the waiting room that he did not show signs of autism or any other disorder at this time. He also said read Brody's records and understood why we were coming to see him. At no point did he tell us we were crazy for bringing a 5 month old to his office for an autism check-up/screen.
He spent the next 40 minutes or so testing his eye contact, his awareness and early joint attention habits (so, joint attention is when you give your kid an ice cream cone, a BIG one, and they look at you first before eating it...yeah...it's that vague and that minor, but it means so much in development. And it's not just when they eat ice cream, it's for anything, really...they check with your for a connection on most anything).Dr. Altman went through some of the milestones we should be on the lookout for in the coming months.
Sam had his 15 month check up today and so far, he is thriving. I realize at 15 months Brody was thriving, too except for his speech.
I don't think a day will pass, especially in the coming months up until age 2, that I won't second guess Sam's development. He pointed at our new bird Ne-Yo today in the kitchen, then looked right at me...and I almost lost it; Brody hasn't pointed at an object for almost 7 years. Little milestones mean so much in our house...everything from putting on shoes to using a fork to making eye contact during a conversation, it is all so valuable. And it's something many take for granted...heck, when Destin was a baby I took it for granted, too.
The moral of this little story is...despite the stress and chaos of lives with children, and it is very stressful, a child really is a gift. A snotty, loud, messy, smelly, wonderful gift. Sam is such a precious little bit of joy to our family and we know he is a gift to Brody, and to Destin. He is exactly what we needed, and when we needed it. He's the most valuable gift we could give our other children - a best friend for life. And we will always be grateful for our Sammer Bammers.
