Okay, I guess yesterday's post really should have been "First of Four". Sorry.
My "first and a half" thing? The GFCF diet stuff.
It's hard. Some days, really hard. The elimination of soy and eggs make it especially rigorous to adhere to the diet. Many favourite foods are off limits, and she doesn't understand why.
We questioned if maybe soy and eggs have been the problem the entire time, and maybe we didn't need to be on the GFCF diet. So we broke it. For a week. We had a wheat-bread, yogurt-eating lollapalooza.
The first day was okay. She looked at me quite disbelievingly when I offered her yogurt. She proceeded to devour the entire container.
The second day was not too bad. Maybe slightly more obsessive than usual, but nothing to write home about. She had trouble settling to sleep that night, and was up a bit earlier than normal.
By the third day, the sleep problems were become more marked.
By the end of the week, she was only sleeping 5-6 hours a night (and not all at once, she would start jumping on our bed at 3 a.m.), down from her 11-12 hours a night that she now normally sleeps, unmedicated.
We have established the need for the GFCF diet.
No, not a post about the Borg. Although that might be cool if I did a post on the Borg sometime.
I have lots of stuff to catch up on... once I actually post everything that's happened, you'll see why it took me so long to post it!
Instead of creating one, long post, however, I will break it up into several smaller posts. More easily digested that way. Like chewing your food vs. gulping it down whole.
The big news? We pulled Abby out of ABA. Finito. Kaput. Le fin.
After a disastrous teleconference with St. Amant regarding nursery school [at which I felt like the acting in-charge-person was essentially daring me to quit the program], we quit the program. Right then and there.
Effective when? Immediately.
Would I like help creating an exit strategy? No thanks, I already have one.
Would you like to have a debrief? Not really.
Would you care to elaborate on your issues with the program so we can help other families? If you haven't ascertained what my "issues" are by now, I'm sorry I can't help you.
So.... what now?
We moved from having a "comprehensive" (and I use the term laughingly and sarcastically) therapy program to having a hodge-podge of services for Abby.
It's fun, actually. We get to go to playgroup.
Heck, we get to leave the house, that in itself is a novelty and has helped my depression immensely. But I digress...
I get to expose her a variety of novel situations and social settings. Most days she does great. Some days not so great. That's okay.
We do home-schoolish things every day, working on different school-readiness skills. Rachael does them with us too, and is loving it.
We get to sleep in when we need to, and take a "day off" when we're not feeling so well.
We go to the park, and sing songs while on the swings, and play games and practice eye contact.
We go to nursery school two afternoons a week, and she has a ECE helper with her. Yeah!
We're seeing the occupational therapist every other week, the speech therapist every other week, and the Floortime worker once a week.
Lots to do, lots to keep track of, and I'm the least stressed about "therapy" than I have been in a year.
Awesome, eh?
Welcome to our "new and improved life"! You know, where we actually have a life.
