As I sit here anxiously awaiting Timothy’s first day of Playschool tomorrow I know deep down what I’m most anxious about.
Timothy is our last baby. The last “firsts” we will experience with a child of our own. And although there were many times I wished we were “on track” with other kids, I relished the extra time I got with Timothy needing me. I got to carry him a little bit longer and to snuggle him to sleep just those few extra times. I got to drag out the last of our firsts.
Now everything is about to change. I’ve seen it coming the past few months. The leaps and bounds forward Timothy has made. And it’s amazing, truly. But it’s scary too.
Playschool is going to open so many doors for Timothy. The help and services he will receive is what we’ve hoped for these past 2 years. But it also means that he is about to grow into a little boy, the last traces I have of my baby slowly going away.
I know that now comes the growing up, the independence, the need for me a little bit less. I know that now comes the letting go.
It is time for a new beginning. Today we get our keys for our first owned home together and we start a new chapter in a new place.
We will be saying goodbye to the home we have lived in for the past three years. The place we brought Timothy home to. The home where we went through the journey to his diagnosis and the first 2 years of life with a child that has a disability. This is the place we grieved for his future and the place we came to accept a new future for him. This house has been filled with some of the lowest moments of our marriage but it has also been filled with love, perseverance, commitment, and growth in our marriage.
As we’ve been leading up to this move I’ve been thinking about how much our life is going to change. Although we aren’t moving far from the city, as I started to set things up I realized we will have a whole new schedule and routine. There will be a shift in our everyday life. And although this change has been months in the making it will happen in a way that is all at once.
Hailey will be attending a new school in a different school board. Coming with it new bell times, new bussing, new teachers and new kids. Charlotte will be attending a dayhome once a week, the first time she won’t be babysat by my family. And Timothy will be plopped in a completely new environment where at first everything will feel like a threat to his safety.
Of course all of those changes have a flip side too. Hailey will attend school with most of the same kids all the way through grade 12 and has a chance to make life lasting friendships. Charlotte will get a chance to socialize with other kids more before kindergarten and experience more independence. And once Timothy learns his space it will be his to keep since we won’t be living on a year to year lease.
See there are two sides to the story as there often is. Something I’ve been working on learning since Timothy’s diagnosis is that positive and negative feelings can coexist. It definitley doesn’t come naturally because it is confusing to feel tinges of sadness over a happy situation. And with the move it has been hard to navigate these coexisting feelings.
Most of the time I am so excited. It’s all I can think about and all I want to do is plan out the home decor in my head. But sometimes a little fact hits me and has me in tears. Like the fact we won’t see Grandpa everyday at school pick up, or the fact Hailey is nervous about having no friends, or the realization that if James is still working away I will be very alone now that I live farther from my parents.
I find it hard to express these negative feelings because I never want to make it seem like I am unhappy with our decision or not excited to meet this BIG goal of ours. Of course I’m happy and excited but I’m nervous and maybe a bit scared too.
I need to honor those negative feelings so that when we go to pick up those keys this afternoon I can fully appreciate the positives of this new chapter.
This is a goal years in the making and we have finally reached it. Buying a house was always important to us but after Timothy’s diagnosis it became the highest priority. We wanted a place he could get comfortable in that we didn’t have to leave. We wanted to be able to make adjustments for him. And it was important for us for the girls to have a steady home growing up. We’ve moved with Hailey three times before this and didn’t want to have to keep doing that to her, especially now that she is in school. We wanted a place Charlotte could make friends and feel comfortable enough to talk and participate in her environment. I know that the community and town we chose will make all of these things possible for us. And I am excited to live somewhere different, I’ve never moved out of the city I was born in. I think that this will be a new chapter in our family unit that will help us grow closer together.
These are positives feelings I need to honor.
Home.
Sometimes in life we get to caught up in how we are supposed to feel about things that we can’t even figure out how we really feel. But life isn’t black and white. This week has been full of grey areas. I’ve switched between sad and happy tears, excitement and anxiety. And although it can be confusing and feel wrong, It’s all a part of the journey.
When I found myself as a young, single mother who was still in post secondary I didnât think the world of dating would really be suited for me. In the time since my last relationship dating had become a whole new thing, commitment was out and casual was in. But casual was never my thing, and especially with a two year old to consider. I still believed in something long lasting.
So in my attempt to hack the dating system when I went online looking for a potential partner I was REALLY specific in my search. First I filtered out anyone under the age of 25 (I was 22 at the time) because I figured that older equaled more willing to commit. Then I filtered out anyone who didnât have kids, my theory being that someone with a kid couldnât judge me for having one. Probably not the greatest science ever done but hey I figured it was my best shot.
My little ‘Mulan’
I had been on these apps for awhile and probably went through every profile of the guys who made it through my filters; it wasnât getting me very far. But after an eventful night of Trick or Treating with my little Mulan I remember opening my app to a message, âHey, What types of things do you like to do when you donât have your little one?â. Clicking the profile I immediately thought ânopeâ. I didnât recognize the profile so I knew it wasnât one that had came up in my filtered search, I mean this guy was 20 years old, lived in a different town, and definitely did not have kids (he was cute though haha). Even though I figured the conversation wouldnât lead anywhere I was getting a little tired of talking to 38 year olds who lived in their ex wives basement (for real) so I decided why not reply.
Zoo Lights!
Surprisingly the next day I found myself on the phone with this guy for over three hours. We talked about a lot; stories from growing up, our religious beliefs, our views, and our goals for the future. It was definitely not the type of conversation I was expecting to have with a 20 year old (because you know I was obviously much older and wiser at the age of 22). The one thing I remember the most about that phone call is that he asked me what I was looking for…friendship, something casual, a relationship, marriage? It was such an upfront question and it threw me off. I was thinking yikes itâs not like Iâm going to marry you (I did haha) but I am looking for something committed and not casual.
Out of all of the people that I had tried to weed out through my super (eye roll) scientific plan the only person I ended up agreeing to actually meet was this 20 year old guy… James, if you havenât caught on yet haha.
For our first date he took me to this little Italian restaurant and we ended up being there for 4 hours talking and learning about each other (while my sister and best friend thought I had been kidnapped since I hadnât answered their texts). After that we almost seamlessly progressed into a relationship. We talked on the phone for hours on the days we didnât see each other, and he would take any chance he got to drive up to see me. I introduced him to Hailey and he never made me feel like including her in our time together was a bother or a burden to him. I very quickly learned that my scientific method might have been off. He wasnât over 25 and he didnât have a kid of his own but he had the same wants and goals for his future and wanted us to be a part of reaching them.
Us.
Thank you for reading part one of our story. Stay tuned for part two!
In the world of parenting a children with disabilities I have always considered myself fairly lucky in regards to our diagnosis. Both in the sense that our diagnosis does not affect the expected lifespan of our son and also in the fact we received a firm diagnosis before Timothy was even 1. I didn’t even realize how lucky that second one was until I started talking with parents who were still awaiting diagnosis at 2 and 3 years old.
LCA seemed like our best case scenario when we went through testing because it wasn’t life threatening. Sure, Timothy’s condition was causing some other developmental delays but that’s to be expected…right? I mean if you can’t see it is pretty scary to let go and take steps on your own, and how can you learn the words for cup or bowl or spoon or fork when they all feel similar to each other. Not to mention the absolute lack in therapies for most of Timothy’s life in the times of Covid.
I’d say I have felt pretty secure in our trajectory and what the future held since getting the results. But maybe I was too comfortable, maybe I was missing something, or there was something I just didn’t want to face. At least that’s what one of my son’s doctors thought.
Playing on the swing.
So when I sat in front of a doctor in April for the first time and was told they would like to run a chromosomal array, well I wasn’t happy to say the least. I thought you don’t know Timothy, you just met him. How could this doctor sit there and question his diagnosis, it made no sense. And as I left that meeting with the words “he doesn’t look like he has a syndrome but we might as well check” ringing in my ears I started to feel a little off balance.
There was no way he didn’t have LCA. I mean we were all genetically tested. That can’t be wrong can it? It wasn’t. So after sending in our full retinal genetic report and finding out nothing came back on the chromosomal array I thought “Ha!” I won this round.
Unfortunately that was only round one. And this doctor was still not comfortable to say that his developmental delay was caused by LCA or at least not entirely. So when we spoke over the summer I was told that yes Timothy does have LCA…but (oh no) that doesn’t mean he can’t also have another condition affecting development.
Another condition? On top of LCA? I wasn’t ready for that. We got our answer a long time ago. We have accepted it (for the most part). Living with LCA is our life now. I’m not ready to go through another diagnosis.
At our appointment in October.
Our next appointment to further discuss the testing and to possibly perform the test was scheduled for October. The reason we had to wait so long was because it is a BIG test and they had to apply for approval to fund it. It’s a test called Whole Exome Sequencing (WES) and it goes through about 20,000 genes, it can tell us a lot of information about Timothy’s genetic make up. So for the 3 months leading up to the appointment I went back and forth in my head about whether or not I felt another test was worth it.
Most of the time I landed on NO. I know my kid. I know him. I’ve watched him struggle and I’ve watched him learn. Yeah maybe he isn’t where we thought he would be, even with the LCA, but he’s making progress…isn’t he?
But as we got closer to the appointment I started to question myself more and more. Is he making progress? His speech has improved for sure but physically has he changed much this year?
I started to think about the disability funding we get and how they wouldn’t pay for therapies because he’s “just blind”. I started to think about the fact he will be in preschool next year and being able to access the appropriate amount of help for him. And I started to think of myself at the beginning of this journey. I started to think of the endless hours I spenttrying to get Timothy to look at me, trying to convince myself it wasn’t what they thought it was.
And so I decided to do the test. Because not doing the test was for me. Because I’m not ready to have another diagnosis thrown at us. Because I’m scared of what could come back. Because I’m comfortable with how things are.
But doing the test is for Timothy. Because if something comes back we can manage it, we can access the appropriate help, we can learn about it and what it means for his future. And then we can begin to accept it.
So here we are 2 years later almost to the day sending blood work to Finland and beginning our wait…again.
Timothy.
Thank you for reading and continuing to support our journey.
Thoughts from my First Motherâs Day as a special needs parent.
I never dreamed I would be this mom. You know, the mom with a special needs child. It’s a shocking thing to say out loud but it’s true. No one dreams to be a special needs parent, it just happens.
Before I became a special needs mom…
I may have dreamed I would be the mom chasing my toddler around the house. I never dreamed I would be the mom begging my toddler to attempt to crawl.
I may have dreamed that I would be the soccer mom, or the dance mom. Running between championship games and year end recitals. I never dreamed I would be the mom with 20 doctors and specialists numberâs in her cell phone. Running between PT and OT and SLP appointments. Heck if I am being honest I never dreamed I would be the mom who knew what all those letters stood for.
I may have dreamed I would be the mom who surprised her kid with a car on their 16th birthday. I never dreamed I would be the mom whose child would never have the ability to drive.
Now that I am a special needs mom…
I never dreamed I would be the mom begging my toddler to attempt to crawl but then I wouldn’t be the mom who got to clap and cheer for her toddler who found the strength to push into the crawling position.
I never dreamed I would be the mom who has 20 doctors and specialists numberâs in her cell phone but then I wouldn’t be the mom who got to advocate for and support her child’s health and well being every single day.
I never dreamed I would be the mom whose child would never have the ability to drive but then I wouldn’t be the mom who got to have those extra car rides and conversations with her child.
So yes I never dreamed I would be this mom but I also never dreamed that I could have so much strength, or that I could give so much of myself, or that I could love someone as much as I do now because I am this mom. The mom with the special needs child I never dreamed of but now couldn’t imagine life without.
Dear Timmo, Tiny, Teeny, Timotee, or one of the many silly nicknames you get called:
I canât believe your first birthday has come and gone already. When I think about your first year it feels so long and stretched out and like it went by so quickly all at the same time. Â
Newborn Timothy.
Timothy, you entering our family changed everything for us in so many ways. You are the first boy in our little family but also the first grandson on both sides of the family so there was a lot of excitement to have a little man join us after so many (adorable) little ladies. Â You are also what we plan to be (never say never) our final baby and the completing piece of our family. And then of course there is the fact that you were born blind.
I was so excited to be having a baby boy but also very nervous. I have 2 younger sisters, I have 6 nieces, and I have your 2 sisters. Girls are kind of what Iâm used to. I wasnât sure if our bond would be different than the one I had with your sisters, and quite quickly after you were born I learned that it definitely was different but not in the way I expected. There is something about being a mom to a little boy that is a whole new kind of magic.
Father and Son.
Your presence had a sweetness to it from the very beginning and it is what I love the most about you. You are the best at cuddling, always getting so close and curled up against me or dad (or some of your other favorite snuggle buddies) and letting us soak in all the baby love you have to offer. You never want to be too far from us and I love watching your little hands reaching out to find us and pulling yourself closer.
A very close second to your sweetness is your pure joy. Your smile lights up the room and your laughter is contagious (even more so than COVID-19). I would do just about anything to make you laugh your deep belly laugh and see that bright smile on your face. When there were tough days during the months we were awaiting a diagnosis I remember that every time you would smile I knew that no matter what you are the perfect little boy for our family and that you will be just fine.
Smiles.
Watching you grow this past year has been the greatest privilege and blessing. You have changed everything in our family and made us stronger, kinder, and more determined people than we were before. Most importantly you have taught us about love in ways we never could have imagined without having you in our lives.
The way you trust us to catch you whenever you decide to be a little braver than youâre ready for shows me that we are doing a good job because we are your safe place. And I hope as you continue to grow and learn and get even braver, you will know that you can always trust us to catch you. We will forever be your safe place, your biggest fans, your greatest supporters, and your loudest advocates. We love you so much buddy, just the way you are.
Being a mom is tiring; there is no question about that. At any age and stage during infancy to adulthood there is always a reason that being a mom is exhausting: as a newborn itâs the constant waking to feed, as a toddler itâs the constant energy, as a child itâs the constant activities. Past that I canât really say first hand but I have some ideas. But being a mother comes with more than just lack of sleep and energy, it comes with the type of tired that sleep alone canât fix.
It’s tough to be a baby.
The main reason that being a mother is so exhausting is because of something called the mental load. I like to think of the mental load like a giant backpack filled with miscellaneous items that are inside my brain. It is a weight that mothers carry every single day, and being a mother to a special needs child adds a significantly longer list of items to the backpack.
This backpack is filled with big and little things, but the weight of each adds up to be quite heavy for one person to carry alone. Especially when just as quickly as something gets taken out of the backpack six more items are placed inside it.
This mental load aspect of parenting is something that usually falls onto the mother (not always) and therefore can cause some strain in the parenting relationship because it is a lot to ask of one person. Men and women are just different and as much as everyone knows that it can be really frustrating to deal with those differences in daily life.
This morning my husband got up and decided he had enough time to make himself some eggs and toast for breakfast before work. So he did that, and he went to work.
This morning I came downstairs to get Hailey ready for school and all of us out the door in time for the school bus. But I saw there was no bread left to make her a sandwich and so I had to go get some from the deep freeze in the garage. On my way over there I noticed Jamesâ boots tracked mud all over the front entry way so when I got back inside I swept. Then when I went to throw out the mud I noticed the garbage never made it out last night and so I changed that. And then I cursed under my breath and got all the kids ready and out the door.
Toddler Tantrums.
As I sat at the bus stop waiting I sent off a quick snippy text to my husband âThanks for leaving me no bread to make Haileyâs lunchâ. I was furious. Yes I know itâs just bread and at least we did have some in the freezer but Iâm tired.
I am tired of being the only one to remember that: Haileyâs lunch needs made, the agenda needs signed, the pediatrician needs called, the physiotherapy needs scheduled, Timothyâs on his last pair of clean pants, Charlotte only has 2 diapers left ,next weekâs appointment conflicts with school pick up, did we use the last of the frozen vegetables last night? I better pick some up.
The to-do list that continues for eternity in my head is overwhelming. As I think myself into a spiral I heard my phone. âSorry babe I didnât think of it.â That was my husbandâs reply and as much as I was still seething, I also wanted to laugh. Unfortunately that was just the truth of the situation, he didnât think of it. There was no master plan to make my morning more difficult although it felt like it at the time.
Remember how I said the mental load is like a backpack full of miscellaneous items in your brain? Well continuing with that analogy… think of when you go away as a family, even for a night. What does your husband pack? Probably his own bag which consists of a new shirt, underwear, deodorant, and if youâre lucky a toothbrush. What do you pack? What do you pack for the kids? Chances are a lot more than what he packed. As women we tend to want to be prepared for anything, and are generally more organized then men. So if you pack more in your physical backpack than your husband, what makes you think it would work any different mentally?
Road trips.
Now Iâm not saying this means that it should all be on you and that he is off the hook. Not at all. But I think the first step of sharing that mental load is for you both to understand how the other sees it and why. And then to try and find a common ground and compromise on what you each can realistically take care of.
For my husband, he doesnât have a great memory so if I want him to take out the garbage for me, or switch over the dishes while Iâm out late at girl guides with the kids, I just need to ask. And for myself even though I know realistically I need to handle all the scheduling of appointments, I just need a listening ear from him to vent to about my stresses with it.
There will always be differences between my husband and I in how we deal with things and that is just a part of joining your life with another person. The way we communicate about it and work together is the most important aspect.
I donât ever expect to not carry the majority of the mental load simply because of who I am as a person (I like to be organized and Iâm a worrier). What I do expect is that my husband is there to hold the backpack for me for awhile when I just canât carry it anymore or that he is there to help catch it when it starts to slip off.
Partners.
Thank you for patiently waiting for a new post, the backpack has been a little extra heavy these days <3.
This week is normal; in fact it is so normal that it actually feels abnormal. We donât  have any doctor appointments, therapies, or specialists. Iâm not expecting any phone calls for scheduling or testing or updates. It is just a plain old week. And as much as I should enjoy it, it feels wrong, like I must be forgetting something.
Smiley Timothy.
Ever since we started this journey with Timothyâs Leber Congenital Amaurosis (LCA) I have gotten accustomed to the busyness of it. There seems to always be something going on whether that be an appointment, or two, a therapy, a new doctor, a follow up phone call. I donât really remember the last week I had without at least one of the above.
Although this is an unusually quiet week, I can just look at my calendar for the next 6 weeks and realize that this is the calm before the storm of all of the above and then some.
Yet something about the quietness of this week has my anxiety going wild. After shrugging it off as just anticipation for the crazy month and a half that is creeping up on me, I realized it actually isnât that at all. Instead it is the fact that all the busyness is what feels ânormalâ to me now.
Having a child with special needs comes with a lot of moving pieces and I have been organizing those pieces into our lives for about 7 months now. In a way it feels like it has become our life. So when we have a chance to sit back and just have a quiet week at home it just doesnât feel right.
This is a part of special needs parenting that I really struggle with; the right to feel normal in abnormal circumstances.
Playtime with our girls.
I think it confuses other people who havenât been in this situation to think of weekly appointments and a lifelong disability as being ânormalâ but for us special needs families we need to regain a sense of normality in our life after the initial shock of a disability diagnosis.
 I get more comfortable with Timothyâs diagnosis every day. The little details of his nystagmus (jumping eyes) or him not making eye contact with me have become less obvious and I can go for hours in a day without even thinking about him being blind. He is just my Timothy, he interacts with me how he always has, and he interacts with the world as he always has. And to us that is normal. Â
I get used to running around to all the appointments and in a way I enjoy it. Checking in with Doctors and starting new therapies makes me feel like I am doing something to help Timothy thrive.
Yes there are still days where I am completely overwhelmed by my schedule and how I will make it all work, or completely heartbroken over the dirty look Timothy got at Wal-Mart because he was going cross-eyed (which is actually called Strabismus by the way).
A big part of acceptance and moving forward is finding our new ânormalâ and being able to enjoy our family fully just the way it is and that is what we are learning to do every day.
So I hope for other special needs families out there, you can also realize that we all deserve to feel normal regardless of if your “normal” is different from others.
The first evening after learning about Timothyâs eyes I came home and thought âwhy me?â now I know that sounds terrible but itâs not what you think.
Brand new baby.
I wasnât thinking why me because I did not want to have a child with a disability, but because I didnât know if I could be strong enough, brave enough, smart enough, organized enough, just overall good enough to handle everything we were about to have thrown at us.
I had seen parents of children with disabilities and the struggles they had. I didnât know exactly but I saw how much it took out of them. The paperwork, the appointments, the testing, and the waiting. Watching your kid suffer, be afraid, cry, not understand what is going on, not be like other kids, and be bullied because they are not like other kids.
I got a sudden case of Imposter Syndrome wondering if I was âMomâ enough to handle this. Timothy is my third child so I felt like I kind of had the hang of it all. At least age 0 to 5 but that was with typical children. I had no idea how to handle a child with special needs… and blindness? Well I knew it was a thing but I never had really been around anyone who was blind before.
All I knew about blindness was that Timothy would have to learn and read Braille. You know those little bumps on the washroom signs. So in an effort to rid myself of the Imposter Syndrome, I threw myself into learning Braille and I was pretty good at it too. I memorized the entire alphabet within days.
But Timothy was just 4 months old and having me know the alphabet in Braille was not really going to help the current situation. So I also threw myself into research, on blindness and on his preliminary diagnosis of Leber Congenital Amaurosis (LCA). I read about how we can adjust the house for him, how we can help make him more comfortable in new places, how I can teach him about things through talk and touch. I learned about LCA and read about all the different gene types (we didnât yet have our diagnosis). Â I also connected with tons of families. I joined Facebook groups and followed Instagram pages. I learned through others who had blind children who were a bit older than Timothy.
 And slowly the Imposter Syndrome started to fade. You know the saying knowledge is power and not only had I been gaining knowledge about blindness and LCA for months, who else was more knowledgeable about Timothy than me?
Some of Timothy’s Sensory toys.
I would go to countless appointments with different doctors who all have different specialties but they seemed to ask the same questions. Nothing seemed to be going anywhere. I know Timothy and I know what he needs and what he is ready for or not. I know where we need help. So instead of going to these appointments answering the same five questions about his growth and development I now go with my list of questions and the things I think we should be doing for him.
This is when I finally started to answer the question of âWhy Me?â
Because I love my children deeply and unconditionally. I will advocate for Timothy in every single situation whether itâs to a Doctor or a family member or a stranger in the mall. I will never stop researching and learning about all the things I can do to make life easier for Timothy. I will never stop educating others on Timothyâs condition. I will do absolutely anything and everything to help Timothy succeed.  As I started to really think about it the better question that first night would have been âWhy not me?â .
Becoming a Special Needs parent was not something I had planned and at first it was really uncomfortable for me to feel like I had anything to offer the situation but slowly Iâve discovered that I am one of the most important people on Timothyâs team. I am his Mom.
Mama and Timothy cuddles.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my blog.
Happiness Is Blind 