My daughter has Aspergers. It doesn’t matter that we don’t have a slip of paper with the words on it yet, I know.
An official recommendation is made for assessment by an autism team and while I’m coping, it’s all a bit much.
She bounces off the walls, sensory seeking, frantically jumping and leaping and running and falling and laughing too loud and too hard for too long. She avoids my eyes and runs away and hugs me like the world is ending, clinging to my shoulders, trying to scale me like a jungle gym.
I drag her outside to jump on the trampoline and run and swing.
It helps.
For a while.
The sun shines brightly, but the wind is cutting and while she doesn’t feel it, I do and I shiver as I push the swing.
We check for eggs, she races around, she falls over and laughs.
I read about autism and aspergers and remember Amy’s first year, a first year I’ve blocked out for my own sanity. A year of screaming, of arched backs, of refusing to be consoled, to breastfeed, to play.
***
My son screams the scream of a frustrated toddler. He has wants and needs and I’m not meeting them fast enough.
8 hours of tantrums later, a small giggle escapes him as I take time to tickle him.
Two white points pushing through his top gum, two angry swellings on the bottom. Teeth. More of them.
His tantrums continue, interspersed with happy chats on my lap.
My head aches.
***
My partner hurts his back and tries to drive me to an appointment the day afterwards.
Half way to the city, his back seizes and he pulls over, stuck, screaming, in pain.
20 minutes later an ambulance takes him to hospital, leaving me and the children behind, on the side of the road. Stranded; I don’t drive.
My father-in-law and brother-in-law rescue us. I’ve never been so relieved to get home.
My partner makes it home later that night, a prescription of painkillers in his hand.
A week later he still can’t walk much, or move, or help around the house.
***
It’s too much when my daughter bounces and screeches and my son screams and my partner winces and it feels like all the balls are up in the air, waiting to fall in a heap.
It’s too much.
And while I know it will be okay and our families are helping lots, it doesn’t help when I’m on my tenth tantrum and my eighth meltdown and no one can help.
I’m overwhelmed and planning on spending a week in bed when this particular hell ends.
With chocolate.
A lot of chocolate.
