***Disclaimer: If you have been reading my previous posts, you will know that I used to refer to my kid as he/him. While I have been aware of this for a while now, it is only recently she asked me to change her pronouns to she/her. I ask that you be respectful. ***
My first post on this blog was about my pregnancy and the harrowing experience I encountered. I would like to sum up what happened after:
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| I was 30 weeks pregnant here. This is right before my placenta previa diagnosis. |
Breast vs Bottle
If you are very pro-breastfeeding, please skip this section and before I go any further, no I am not interested in hearing "but if you tried harder, you could have done it" or hearing about how if I did x,y,z, I would have been able to. Considering my kid is almost a teenager, I don't think this information would be useful to me anymore! I am an advocate of breastfeeding. I do strongly believe that it is the best thing you could do for your child. On the other hand, I strongly believe that fed is best and whatever choice a mother makes for her family, I will support her. Life is too short to shame or bully someone over a decision someone makes on their own body. As a woman, all my life I was told what I need to do with my body, I will not tolerate this at all. To sum things up, I tried everything to breastfeed but my milk never came in. I tried herbs, I tried pumping, you name it, I did it. In the end, my mental and physical health was greatly affected and my kid was losing weight rapidly. I did what I thought was best. I bottle fed and to this day, I have no regrets. It was the best thing for both of us. I am still angry that the hospital staff as well as a bunch of other people tried to make my lack of milk supply to be my fault. If any new mother is reading this and is experiencing something similar, this is your validation. Do what is best for you. It is better to feed your kid than let the baby starve.
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| When I brought my baby bat home from the hospital |
Pyloric Stenosis - What is it and What Happened
A mother's body is truly a marvel. I have no medical proof of this but I strongly believe that my milk supply never came in because my baby bat had a rare condition called Pyloric Stenosis. Essentially, food is blocked from entering the small intestine. The symptoms often get confused with GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease) and it took many doctor's visits to get a referral to the Children's Hospital. Essentially, my baby was projectile vomiting every time I fed her. As a joke to lighten the stress of the situation, we started calling her Linda Blair (The Exorcist) and we expected to see her head spin! My baby was about 8 weeks old when she had her surgery. It was a simple day surgery but this experience was very traumatic for me. To this day, twelve years later, I still have nightmares where my baby is taken from my arms and wheeled into surgery. I still remember feeling helpless because as a mom, it was my job to heal my baby and it was out of my hands. I had to trust the surgeon to perform the surgery despite wanting to be able to do it myself! I also remember the day we got to bring her home after the surgery. It was Halloween and she was wearing her cute cat costume!
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| First Halloween!!! |
The Early Years
It is true when they say that they don't stay babies for long. I spent a long time on edge because of everything that happened during my pregnancy and with the pyloric stenosis episode. I also saw signs early on that my kid may be slightly autistic. Developmentally, the baby was on track but there were a few signs I noticed early on. There was the arm flapping and the intolerance to lots of loud noises. I kept this in mind but was told to not worry too much since the baby was hitting all her milestones. I worked full-time as a receptionist and while the job paid the bills, I never felt fulfilled. On the other hand, having a 9-5 office job meant I got to put my kid in daycare. It also meant that I didn't have a career that demanded overtime or working on the weekends. I could devote all my free time to being a mom. When the baby bat was about two years old, I realized that being a mom doesn't necessarily mean you have to give everything up. You two are separate people. With that, I came back to Goth and have never looked back!
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| The early days! |
Of Being a Goth Mom and Passing on my Love for Reading
At that time, I came back to goth for myself, but now I realize that being true to myself plays a big role in my child's upbringing. For one, she learned early on that people can be judgemental assholes. She also learned the importance of accepting people for who they are and not by the way they dress. In my house, we have a saying "all that matters is that you are a good person" or my all-time favourite: "don't be a dick!" Our favourite activities were reading, going to the park, and playing silly games. My kid grew up with lots of anime too. We used our imagination a lot. One of my favourite things was looking for Totoro's tree whenever we would venture out in nature. I got a silly tent from Ikea in the kid's section. We filled the tent with pillows and I would read to her. We had lots of children's books. Our favourites were "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak, "Chu's First Day Of School" by Neil Gaiman, "Today I Feel Pretty" by Jaime Lee Curtis (yes, the Halloween movie actress wrote a children's book) Whenever I would read to her, I would make funny voices, get animated and we had so much fun. It was never quiet in my house!
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| Our reading tent |
Concerning Hobbits
When the baby bat got older, I started reading a chapter or two from novels. One of the books we read was JRR Tolkien's "The Hobbit" and I found a park at the other end of the city that had an actual hobbit house! We actually drove out there to go see it and we made it a fun afternoon.
School Age and Autism
Elementary school was not a very pleasant experience for both of us. For instance, since the baby bat's birthday was in September, she started Kindergarten at 4 years old and only turned 5 when the majority of her classmates were turning 6 years old. As a result, she had a lot of trouble academically. This resulted in a lot of meltdowns and tantrums. Over the years, I have spoken to a lot of parents with special needs children and it seems to be the same story: The schools are ill-equipped at dealing with these kids and they try to find a way to get you to put your kid in another school. We ended up in a particular program at the Jewish General Hospital that specializes in helping children with all kinds of issues that stem from ADD/ADHD, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, and many other early childhood disorders you can think of. In this program, parents were given counselling, and children were given tools to deal with their issues while receiving an education. This program is amazing and I am so grateful we were accepted. They are truly wonderful people! I also remember my kid's amazing teacher at the Jewish. Her name was Ms. Anna and she had a very hands-on approach to teaching. After expressing my concern about reading and how my kid didn't do well with the whole sight word method, she taught her phonics. At that time, my kid had a very low reading level but by the time she finished the program, she was years ahead in her reading. Even today, I often hear from teachers how my kid is really advanced with reading and they are impressed with her extensive vocabulary!
Divorce and Co-Parenting
Things in life just happen. I don't want to go into too many details about my personal relationships but it was me who wanted to end my marriage with my
Baby Bat's dad. Things were difficult at first but we managed. Now, we are super close friends and we co-parent extremely well. I remember renting a shitty apartment after my divorce. My floors were not level. We had fun rolling toy cars on the floor to see which one would pass the finish line first! The rent was reasonable, considering I moved to an area that is now considered trendy and there is a lot of gentrification. On the upside, I still live in the same part of town. I am close to everything! There is even a beach, a pool, all kinds of great restaurants, stores and a beautiful park not far from my house. While my apartment at that time wasn't anything fancy, we made the best of the situation. My home was filled with music, laughter, and our famous movie nights were always a hit. We would eat copious amounts of junk food and pizza while watching one of our favourite movies! To facilitate the whole transition, we kept the baby bat in her school despite it being in our old neighbourhood. In the end, we all decided it was best for her to go to school in my area and that was the best decision ever! Remember, I mentioned previously that schools tend to try and shuffle special needs kids around? It was happening again!
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| A photo of me from 2018 while I was living in the old place. |
Our Lives Today - New School, Dating, Friends, and Taking University Classes
During the pandemic and when everything was shut down, we were one of the lucky ones who had a medical note for the baby bat to be homeschooled. We did this for a whole school year but afterwards, she went to a regular, in-person school! Changing schools was the best decision we ever made. By changing schools and having Baby Bat go to school in this area, we also changed school boards. I don't know if it is a school board thing or what but this school is amazing, Academically, she has improved so much and the staff is wonderful! We are much happier there. As for dating, I have been in a few relationships but they never worked out. I learned very recently that a huge part of me was afraid of having someone else come in. I was afraid of the kid getting hurt or attached. Kids are much smarter than we give them credit for at times because a few months ago, my kid approached me on this. After a lengthy discussion, she admitted that she is cool with me dating and was wondering why I wasn't. I thought it was really sweet but used this as a teaching lesson. She wanted me to be happy. I told her that I was happy already and you don't need to be in a relationship with someone to be happy or feel complete - a lesson I, unfortunately, had to learn the hard way. She has made a few friends who live in the area. Lately, her new thing is playing D&D with a bunch of kids from her school. When I am home, I have no problem with having a few kids in the house. The fun part of being a mom to a geeky kid, their friends are often similar. I also revel in sometimes being the "cool mom" because I can relate to them with my love for anime and my figure collection. She and her group of friends remind me a lot of the kids in the Netflix series, Stranger Things. They are a bunch of good kids and I am very grateful to see them get along so well. Also, she is much older now and has more independence. She can go out after school to hang out with her friends (as long as I know where she is, got to love Smart Phones and texting!) With working outside of the home and with my classes, the Baby Bat often finds herself being a bit of a latchkey kid. She has been adapting to this really well and seems to be happy, and even more confident with the new independence and responsibilities. She has been really sweet this past week too when I started my classes. She has been helping a lot around the house! It is also very endearing because she is very proud of her mom for taking University classes and wants to encourage me! We really do make a great team! Overall, life has been good for both of us. We enjoy our time together and we are quite happy in our little home. I am very proud of how far we came and one of the most rewarding things about being a parent is watching that tiny little life you created turn into this amazing person. I am super glad we are very close and she takes to heart the important life lessons I try to teach her. This is a nice summary of our lives and while I am ending the blog post here, I am sure we will be adding some new chapters to our story.
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