Go with your gut

When I signed onto Facebook this morning there was a notification telling me that I had 8 memories over the years "on this day".  Naturally I decided to go and see what they were, and I saw Sonzee's one-month picture from 3 years ago.  My caption read "1 month already?!?!".  Looking at this picture I recall vividly how many pictures I took to find the "right" one to post.  It was different than with my other children.  It wasn't because the pictures were not the perfect picture because I was trying to get her to lay a certain way or I wanted more of the background to be a specific way.  It was not because I was trying to find her cutest pose and post that one.  It was because something in my gut was nagging at me.

"Something was not right", I said those words so many times during her first month of life and they fell on deaf ears.  I felt it was so obvious in this picture, and while I wanted someone to agree with me, I was afraid of someone agreeing with me.  Her eyes were facing directly at the camera, but they were not looking at me.  Someone made the comment, "so alert" (for the record, I HATE THAT PHRASE).  I wonder if they could not figure out what was off in that picture, so they chose that overused phrase.  

It was a few days after this picture that I finally ignored others best attempts to tell me "baby's do weird things" or that I was just being crazy, and I decided to go with my gut.  It was within 24 hours that my gut feeling was confirmed.  All those twitches, shakes, and random eye movements were actually seizures, I was not crazy after all.  While there was some validation in knowing I trusted my gut and it was correct, there was not an overwhelming sense of victory when it just confirmed my worst fears.  

The past 3 years have been filled with so many doubts and questions where I continue to question my gut, but time and time again my gut wins.  So many times I challenge my own gut to play devil’s advocate and a lot of the time it is simply done because I want so badly for my gut to be wrong.  I still hold out hope that just once it will be and I tend to cling to that more often than not.  But if I could give anyone starting out on their parenting journey, special needs or not a piece of advice, no matter what others tell you.... go with your gut.

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