Bringing you up to speed

It's me Jay. As Emily stated in her earlier post, this blog is intended to keep family members and friends updated on Carson and also to hopefully help other parents who have children with an ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder.) We're also going to share other family information, special stories, etc. Although at times it seems like our whole life revolves around and is consumed by Carson's ASD, there really is much more to our life. We have a great life and we're very blessed.

For those of you just reading this who do not know us, let me bring you up to speed on how we got to today...

Emily and I met in 2000 while we were in college pursuing our Bachelors Degrees in Human Resources. We were friends for about a year before we started dating. In the summer of 2001, we began dating "officially." We had some ups and downs that year (more ups) and by the summer of 2002, we were engaged - June 8, 2002 to be exact. Emily has many wonderful qualities that attracted me to her initially. She's smart, beautiful, and talented (she's a great singer.) Beyond all that, Emily is a beautiful person inside. She truly makes me a better person and I knew that I couldn't let her slip away (even though I was a commitment-phobic person.) We were married on February 1, 2003 in front of many of our family members and close friends. We knew that we wanted to start a family right away. We were both 28 years old at the time so we immediately started trying to get pregnant (of course, not until after we were married.) After trying for about five months, we were frustrated and decided to see a fertility specialist (fun stuff, right there.) Of course the month after the visit (without any type of fertility), we found out we were expecting. We were so excited! We immediately told everyone (we're not good at keeping exciting news to ourselves.) We started picking out names and knew we were going to find out the sex as soon as we could (again...not good with surprises.) I totally wanted a boy but of course said it didn't matter as long as he or she was healthy. My wish came true and on March 15, 2004, Carson Thomas entered the world. He was perfect and beautiful. The first year was a big adjustment for Emily and I. We were both working full time and I was going to school for my Masters Degree two nights a week. I remember thinking in a year from now, things will be better and easy once he sleeps through the night, starts walking, talking, etc. Little did I know what we were in store for....at just over two years of age, we realized, with some coaxing, that Carson wasn't developing at the rate that he should have been. No parent wants to see that or admit it but it was hard because we had two nephews that are the same age as Carson - Blake, who belongs to my sister Kristie and brother-in-law Brian and Luca, who belongs to Emily's sister Amiee and brother-in-law Ron. About this same time, in the summer of 2006, we found out that we were expecting again. We were thrilled because again we had been trying for about six months. During this time, Carson was tested at our local school district and also made his first trip to the pediatric neurologist. The EEG testing came back normal and this is when we first heard of PDD-NOS. PDD stands for Pervasive Development Disorder. We started an infant preschool program that fall. We had good and bad days in the program...lots of problems transitioning from activity to activity. By the early part of 2007, we learned that Carson qualified for the ECDD (Early Childhood Developmental Delay) program at our school that would begin in the fall and also started seeking out additional speech and occupational therapy. On April 12, 2007, our second son, Griffin James entered the world. Again, perfect and beautiful. Since Griffin's birth, we're adjusting to having two kids. Thank God, Griffin is one of the easiest babies ever. He is almost always content and happy. He's a perfect fit into our somewhat crazy life. During the past year, we've started treating Carson's ASD with several different approaches. He sees a chiropractor, massage therapist (for cranial massage), and an occupational therapist weekly. He also attends his preschool program half a day, five days a week where he receives speech therapy twice a week and OT once a week. He is making great strides. He is also on some dietary supplements because as we found out from another of our doctors, he has "leaky gut", meaning the lining of his stomach has a tear that allows things (peptides) to get into his bloodstream, which have been feeding his speech and developmental delay. Toward the end of 2007, we started Carson on a GFCF (gluten free, casein free) diet (so we thought.) Gluten is wheat, oats, barley, rye, etc. and casein is dairy. We noticed some improvement from his diet. However, a couple of weeks ago, we also realized that we were messing up with diet. On April 17, we went totally GFCF. The things happening are amazing.....coming in my next blog.