Two realizations today:

1) I am a crap mom.
2) I am seriously broken.

11/19/10

So, I’m writing this entry from work. Makes me feel like I’m cheating somehow. Or maybe stealing from the boss. But then I remember all the crazy shit that goes on here and I can at least be ok with it, even if I’m not 100% comfortable.

What I’m not ok with is the fact that Sam failed another hearing test this week. He failed the first one in August because of a double ear infection. We figured it was the same thing this time, but we were told by three doctors at our family practice that they did not see any infection this time. So Monday we’re going to see a pediatric otolaryngologist (not typing that word again – from here out it’ll be ENT) at the U of M Hospital. Sam did end up coming down with a cold. Maybe that’s all it is, but he has never been able to get a good reading with tympanometry. His inner ear works just fine, but there is a problem somewhere in the outer or middle ear.

Maybe, just maybe, if his speech delay is due in part to this hearing loss, our insurance company may actually pay for speech therapy instead of telling us we have to rely on what the school district provides. That is such a shitty way to treat kids and their families, telling them that if the speech problem they are dealing with is in any way a developmental issue then it’s not covered. School districts do not have the resources to give a child with severe delays the amount of therapy they actually need. Sam gets one hour a week with his ECS teacher and 1.5 hours in a group setting. He needs one-on-one therapy with a licensed SLP and as of this point, after nearly a year in the system, he has yet to actually work with a dedicated SLP. Understanding the whole IEP process and knowing how to get what we need from the system practically calls for an advanced college degree. I’m a dummy without even an associates degree and fewer functioning brain cells by the day (lack of sleep is great for that). All I know is that I’m going to read up on everything I can before his next IEP meeting and I’ll sure as hell be better prepared than I was at the first one. Guess I’ll need to practice being a hard-ass bitch before then since its never really come naturally.

I had a really low moment today at the MOPS meeting. Just sitting there, fiddling with my phone and eavesdropping on a conversation between two of my table-mates. Both just happen to have little boys close to Sam’s age and they were talking about the things that their boys say. My heart breaks every time I hear things like that. I want to cry for so many different reasons I can’t even put in to words. I know that Sam has made progress in the last year. I think for Christmas this year I am going to buy a tape recorder so I can look back next year at this time and remember how far he has come. (FYI, I’ve already planned out how my entire end of year bonus is going to be spent, I just haven’t told Tim about all of it yet.)

Ok, time to get back to work because there is just so much to do (not really, but I have to pretend I'm busy).

11/9/10

Ok, so I finally did it.  This is the first, maybe the last, but its definitely a blog entry.
Kids are sleeping, fiber is steaming away and I finally have some time to myself.

First of all, I want this to be a place where I can just blab about family issues, mainly dealing with my little big-mouth and this ordeal of getting him to talk. I think its more an ordeal for me than anyone else because of my tendency to be overly dramatic and fatalistic about things. I'm always worried that if I don't do exactly the right thing then I'm going to screw him up somehow. Not that I don't worry about messing up the other two, but it seems different somehow with this one.

My least favorite thing to do is trying to figure out how to get our health insurance to pay for Little Man's speech therapy. Now, I understand that speech delays are covered under IDEA and those services are provided by the schools, but even though he has made progress since his initial IEP in February 2010, it seems like he should be getting further. It doesn't help that everything I've read about apraxia indicates at least three one-on-one sessions with an SLP (speech language pathologist) are required every week to make progress. We love his teacher, but as good as she is, she is not an SLP and the schools have different standards.

That's it for today. Maybe I'll have something more to say tomorrow, maybe not. Goodnight blog, I'll most likely kill you in the morning.