Decisions

August 21, 2010

Decisions

Sir and i had a long chat this morning, after He had been fairly quiet the past couple of days thinking about stuff. When He gets like that i know the best thing to do is to leave Him be, stay away from the subject and give Him time to process everything and make His decisions, and He always talks things through with me once He has gotten things clear in His own mind. So this morning we had that talk about William. i'm not going to go into all the details about what we discussed but some decisions got made which i will post here:
 
- we are very lucky that we have been blessed with such a bright, generous and well-behaved little girl in Poppy, as well as two adorable new baby boys. We know what it is like to lose a child, plus many couples are not able to have any children of their own, let alone 3 like we have right now. The fact that we were surprised by twins this time round makes us doubly lucky, so we have decided not to forget how lucky we are with our family, and to make the most of having them every single day.
- the time when the twins are babies will fly by really quickly, just like it did with Poppy. Having the PND stopped me from fully enjoying her when she was really little, so we know how important it is to appreciate this special time when they are so new and tiny. Whether we spend all our time crying and moaning and fretting and worrying or not, will make no difference to William's condition or prognosis, and could actually be harmful in that it prevents us spending quality time interacting with our children. So we have decided to be as happy and positive as possible, and enjoy these precious first few days, weeks, months and years with our children, having as much fun and laughter as we can, nurturing them and teaching them and helping them to develop, spending time together as a family and giving all our children as many different and stimulating experiences as possible to aid their growth, so that we can all look back on these times with happy memories.
- William has a condition which means he has special needs and is likely to have some medical problems and other challenges to face in his life. This means that we as parents will need to give him extra care, help, support, attention, time and resources. Nobody knows exactly what difficulties he will face or how his condition will present itself and change over time, not even the most experienced doctors in the land, and fretting about what might be will not do William or us or our other children any good. So we have decided to treat William first and foremost as William, our son, as that is what he will always be to us, and to make sure that our other children see him in this way too, to take each day as it comes, to tackle each challenge as it arises, and to get William whatever help and support he needs from outside agencies, from resources and from us as parents so that he can be the best that he can, just as we hope and want for our other children too.
 
i am feeling a lot more positive after our talk this morning, and reassured now that the appointment with the specialist has been moved forward to 1 1/2 weeks' time. William is still having the episodes which i think are seizures and we have managed to get a couple of different ones on video now (he is doing 3 different types so far as i can tell - he has little jerks of his head and arm now too, lasting a second at a time, but coming in clusters, as well as the repeated arm/leg movements one and the folding inwards and getting very stiff one). Unless his breathing gets compromised, i feel confident to deal with his seizures at home for now, until we can get him hopefully on some meds and see if that controls them any. Thanks to everyone who is keeping us in their thoughts and prayers.