Our Story

    I've been wanting to put down our story, but it's such a long story that I haven't taken the time.  Until now. Matt and I were married in 1997, and had everything planned.  Married 2 years then start our family.  Well, two years came and went, no baby.  Finally in 2000 we had our first son Caleb.  Now, we wanted to have another one in two years.  Well, again two years came and went.  We were told that I only had a 10% chance of ever having any more children.  CRUSHED, was the word.  There is a very long story with all of this, so I'll skip that part and go to the next part.  In April of 05 I had a dream that "a young lady was pregnant and wanted to give us her baby boy when he was born."  Now if you've ever gone through this, you know that you have dreams often about getting or finding a baby.  So we ignored that dream and decided to get rid of all our baby stuff, and that we were ok with having one son.  The morning of our garage sale I received a call from a lady at our church.  She said that her pastors from Green Bay had called them a while back and told them of a young lady that was pregnant.  They wanted to know if they knew anyone who wanted to adopt.  After praying, they thought of us.  The baby boy was to be born in 8 weeks and if we were interested we could adopt him.  Well, we felt that this was the right thing to do.  Many other things went into this but it would take a book to write it.  In July, the day after my only brothers wedding we got the call that the baby was on the way.  Words cannot describe how we felt!  So after a 9 hour drive.  We met for the first time, the foster parents (that we would stay with) and our little Levi.  He was adorable!!!  We were told though that this was a very healthy pregnancy.  Well, when we got there and talked with the nurses we were told that he was neurologically under developed.  The Mom did not take care of her self and took in harmful things.  (Won't go there)  Ok, short version.  We were there for 33 days, and we'll just say it wasn't easy.  But I thank God all the time that I had the best foster parents ever!!!  They truly became my family.  I also made a very special bond with Levi's aunt while there.  We still stay in contact today.  As Levi grew we realized that something was not right.  AT 1 1/2 he still was not sleeping through the night, actually getting up 6 to 8 times.  He would run into walls face first and not cry, actually he ran into things or came short from diving into things often.  He would bang his head over and over on the door handles, tile floor, any thing hard.  He left bruises but never cried.  He didn't play, just followed me around and honked like a goose.  He would have fits of rage,  run around with no purpose and hurt us often.  We finally contacted the Help Me Grow program in our county.  Thank the Lord for them!!  We got him enrolled and our journey continued.  His OT believed that he had SPD and speech problems.  At 2 1/2 he could only say Mom.  So we went to a Developmental Specialist.  They were more concerned about his speech than anything and we didn't get much help.  So I took matters into my own hands and started researching.  Everything I read about SPD was describing my son.  But our pediatrician kept on saying he had autism.  I found so many resources, and wrote my own report for my family so they could understand what was going on.  Some of them did not understand and thought we just weren't strict enough with him.  Boy, were they all surprised when I handed them my report and said, "here read this".  It helped so much.  They all started helping once they understood.   I came across the book by Jenni McCarthy and said "oh, my here we go".  We started him on the Gluten free diet and within 3 weeks he was starting to talk.  Now I know that this doesn't help all, but if you give it a really good shot you may see some difference.  Behaviors seemed to lesson a little, but not as much as we wanted or needed.  So the OT and I decided to do some serious therapy.  She came into our home and we set up stations throughout the whole house.  Proprioceptive, Tactile, Oral, and Vestibular.  (Please understand, I live in the middle of a bean field.  There's not much out here.  So to get this kind of help was amazing!)  We looked like a big therapy room.  Every hour I did therapy in proprioceptive, and tactile, every two hours oral and vestibular.  So pretty much all day long.  Thankfully my husband is great with his hands and made a lot of things for him.  We couldn't afford to buy it.  He did really well if I could keep up with it, and keep to a very routine schedule.  But I burnt myself out and starting getting sick.  Oh, did I mention that I was pregnant at this time.  Ya, in July of 07 I got pregnant.  7 1/2 years after Caleb.  Thankfully I have great family and friends and they all started pitching in.  Gavin, our third son was born in March of 08.  And two weeks before that Levi was diagnosed with SPD and PDD-NOS.  I won't type what I thought about all of that.  Now today, we have the PDD-NOS removed and only have SPD.  That's enough though.  They are concerned with Impulsive disorder and Bi-poler.  So now we continue to do therapy, watch Levi's diet (and ours), and pray.  Levi is doing much better!  We did do many other things along that time.  But honestly my hand hurts from typing.  I'll share all that at another time.  So today I have 3 very special boys.  I call them all my little miracles, and praise God every day I have them.  Am I tired? YES!!  But content.