My youngest child

     I gave a bit of background on my youngest in my first post, but now I'm going to go more in depth.
     I had a very healthy and fairly easy pregnancy. I only gained 10 pounds and I was very active throughout. He was a tiny little thing compared to his brother, but unlike his brother my breast milk supply came in faster and better. Breastfeeding went well and I was so happy for that.
     However it slowly became the only way he would fall asleep. He was a great sleeper until a bit after he turned 1. He started waking up every 1.5-2 hours and would take about 20-30 minutes to get back to sleep. Needless to say I quickly was in full zombie mode most days. Thank goodness I didn't have a job, or I would have been useless. After a lot of back and forth with his doctor and having to push and insist that this was in fact not normal she finally agreed to do some bloodwork and refer me to a sleep specialist. His iron was low. For a year we worked on getting him on a schedule, getting his iron up, and getting him to fall asleep on his own. Less than a month after he turned 2 he decided he was done nursing and his iron was back up.
     Another issue with his sleep was that he would only sleep in the living room in his pack and play with me in the room. If we let him fall asleep and then moved him he'd wake up within the hour. We had been able to get him back into his crib and me back in my bed. Unfortunately he doesn't do that anymore, so I'm back on the couch. It's not ideal, but we all need sleep around here so we do what works best. Obviously it is a temporary solution and he is showing signs of wanting to sleep in an actual bed.
     He never really met the timetable for any of his milestones. He was almost a year before he crawled properly and was almost 14 months before he even took even one unassisted step. 3 and a half months after he turned 1 he really started walking. He never started saying anything beyond dada, so I started to worry. He was showing signs of more than just delays. He was doing repetitive behaviors, hitting his head on things when he gets mad/frustrated. At 18 months and 24 months I filled out a questionnaire about his behaviors. He was referred to First Steps. Luckily I was well acquainted with the system, so it was smooth sailing. He qualified for services as most of his development areas he was scoring at 10 months even though he was 2. He started seeing an Occupational Therapist  (OT) who recommended he also see an Applied Behavioral Analysis  (ABA) Therapist. He sees OT one hour a week and ABA 7 hours a week.
     After a few months of ABA really started to see what I'd seen quite some time ago. He needed to be tested to see if he falls on the spectrum. I highly suspect he does. He has an appointment in September.
     This is just the highlights, but whatever challenges he may face I am his mom and I will fight for him every step of the way. And he will keep finding new ways to make his whole family smile and laugh.