he was all over the place, destroying the house, crying for no reason, tried to on more than 1 occassion knock over the bassinet with his baby brother in it. it was just horrible. we thought when 4 came it would get easier. I think we were fooling ourselves.

I've taken him to all kinds of specialists. He has a GI doc, He has a geneticist, he has a developmental pediatrician. the developmental pedi was the least helpful of all of them.

She saw us, gathered information, observed. and after 4 visits basically told me Marc had an issue with me. There was nothing wrong with him.

Well finally after much pleading for help of some kind, a psychiatrist agreed to see us. Finally! a dr that believed me that I was not a crazy hormonal "mom" that was thinking something was not right. He got to see Marc in all his raging glory and definitely agreed that something needs to be done. We have another appt Jan 4th, where we are going to discuss the possibility of putting our little guy on anti-psychotics to help keep him level.


he can go from just walking across the floor to <~~this in two steps. One night, he even wrapped a shirt around Ian's neck and tried to drag him across the floor.

To prevent him from hurting himself or others, we have to basically pin him down on the couch until the rage passes. Sometimes he'll surprise you though. You'll think he's calm and the minute you let go of him, he'll laugh in your face and go right back to doing whatever it was that he shouldn't be doing in the first place. (whether it is hitting Ian, trying to play with scissors whatever)

When he's in a rage, his eyes are blank. there is nothing there at all, he is not there. no amount of talking to him gets through, he just laughs manically at you when you tell him to stop when he's like this.

He is strong enough to hurt a grown person when he's in a rage, and has a time or two.

I asked the developmental pedi about childhood bipolar, she quickly dismissed that as something that children don't get. she barely let me finish my sentence before giving that "diagnosis". I asked about the autism spectrum (this is not just 'autism' the spectrums quite a line) I was told he is too social to have ASD , so what the hell is wrong with my child that he goes from sweet boy kissing and hugging his brother to trying to bullwhip him with a game controller cord in .25 seconds while laughing about it???

Then they give me the 'well sometimes preemies just have their wires crossed in their brains' speech. well yeah i realize that, but jeeez!

So here we are, waiting patiently (and not so patiently) for January 4th to get here, so we can see the psychiatrist again.

Marc has always been an active boy. He was a seemingly quiet infant (except the colic stage, oh yeah mama's out there know what I'm talking about), he had a few medical issues that we had taken care of. he always did have trouble regulating his emotions though. other than that he was easy.

At 36wks gestation (he was 10wks old at the time) He had his first of two laser eye surgeries for retinopathy of prematurity. In layman's terms, the blood vessels in his eyes weren't developing right. 10 years ago, he would have just gone blind, now (even 4 years ago when he was born) they have this surgery to correct it.

The first surgery went good no complications, 1 night in the hospital.

We continued to go to the opthamologist for another 4 weeks (every week) when we were told he was going to have to have another. This time it was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving (he was 40wks gestation, 14wks old) the surgery went fine, what came after was not so great. They couldn't get him off the ventilator, my little guy got lazy again and wanted the machine to breathe for him.

we finally got him off the vent later that night and went home Wednesday night.

At 6 months he had a hernia repair, at 1 year they did an orchiopexy (they brought a undescended testicle down). We were finally done with surgeries....or so we thought.

He got stronger as the time passed on 1 went by in a hurry, 2 came and went with 1 surgery in Feb 06 to remove his adenoids and then 3 came and all holy hell broke loose in my house.

9wks

9wks different shot

21wks

Ok Most of y'all know me as Shawn's wife. I've decided to do a different blog, concerning the things we are going through with Marc and Ian.

Marc is our 4 year old 25w6d preemie. He is a firecracker for sure. He has some special needs that are being met as much as humanly possible. He attends a program in the public school system for children with developmental delays. He is making great strides there. His fine motor skills are sorely lacking, part of this has to do with his Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (unofficial diagnosis as of now).

Ian is our 18 month old 32w preemie. He is an attitude-laden tank of a boy. Homebody just like his daddy. He is in early intervention for some (expected) developmental delays. He has yet to say more than 3 words, and is trying to walk but just hasn't quite got it down yet.

I'll go more into details as the days go on, but I wanted to write the first post while it was fresh.



Angela