The First Years

During the first year of Jackie’s life everything was going normally except for her feedings.  She did  not want to feed.  I tried breastfeeding but only lasted 3 months, then tried different formulas until I was able to find one that she would take which, of course, was the most expensive and hard to find.  Jackie started walking at 10 months and saying your normal baby words.  After she turned one she started to eat normally but as she got older she would constantly eat.  She would eat even though she was full.

I started noticing that there was something different with Jackie when she was around two.  I noticed that she stopped learning new words and the words she did know she would repeat them over and over again.  Her speech was mostly jargon and would have crying fits.  Every single night she would wake up crying and I would have to go to her bed to try to calm her.  I was always exhausted.  Jackie was 21 months when my younger son, R, was born, we had bought a house and moved in a month after R was born then 6 months after that I started working 5 to midnight.  I would get home around 12:30 am went to bed around 1 something, after a couple of hours would have to get up to go into Jackie’s room, would fall asleep then be up by 5:30 am to get my oldest son ready for school and bring him to the bus stop.  I worked the night shift for 10 years and only slept about 5 hours a night during that time.

Every time I brought Jackie to a doctor’s appointment I would mentioned that she wasn’t progressing like she was suppose to.  We were referred to get different types of test and I put her in a play group.  Then when she was around 3-4 she went into an early education class.  When she was ready for kindergarten it was obvious that she would not be able to be in a regular class setting so I visited all types of program and got her in a school outside of Boston.  In the meantime we continue with the testing.  She was diagnosed with Autism.  Few years later she was diagnosed with Pervasive Development Disorder.

We continued with this diagnosis and kept her in special needs classes.  I also put her in dance classes together with her younger brother.  Tried music classes but nothing seemed to get her out of her shell.  She would talk some but repeated the same things over and over.  Sometimes she would drive me crazy repeating my name…   “mami, mami, mami” over and over again.  I would say “yes Jackie”, she would respond “nothing” then start all over again.  Or she would say “mami mira esto” (mommy look at this) over and over and over again.  But I have to say, the things she knew and understood were both in Spanish and English. 

On my next blog I will tell you how she did in her dance class and about my first breakdown