Kick off your shoes, sister. You'll immediately feel better.

That image at the left is supposed to be someone's idea of "overworked woman." You know why she's not really THAT overworked? Because she still cares enough to wear high heels.

Recently, Billy was doing his looking-at-catalogs-while-on-the-potty routine and pointed to a picture of a foot in really high heels. "What is it?" he asked me. Clearly, he doesn't see this image a lot.

"That's a lady's foot in pretty high-heeled shoes," I explained.

"That's Miss Elyse," he told me, describing his cute grad student ABA therapist, the only woman he's seen in recent memory who hasn't given up on the idea of stilettos.

Anyway, you may have noticed that I haven't posted a lot recently. I'm in the midst of a huge freelance writing project that's going to allow me to pay Miss Elyse's bill, and all the others that go along with autism therapy, and even take the kids to Disney on New Year's Eve.

So forgive my sporadic posting over the next few weeks, but please do check out BIG DADDY AUTISM, where he has kindly posted something I wrote a while back, but still means a great deal to me: The Denis Leary Spectrum.

As we prepare for the big Turkey Day holiday next week, it's easy to get caught up in the preparations, the stress that comes with housecleaning and menu planning and overnight guests. The irony is that many Thanksgivings have passed without me behaving in the slightest bit thankful for anything.

Today's guest has already made me re-think my priorities. Jessica Watson is a very talented blogger sharing her life's stories at Four Plus An Angel. Her blog is named after her five children, "four in my arms and one in my heart," as she describes her beautiful bunch. In October of 2007, she gave birth to triplets at 28 weeks of gestation, "and my sweet daughter Hadley passed away in my arms on her third day of life," Jessica tells us.

Over the next week, I'm going to be especially thankful that both of my kids have a place at our table, and I'm going to save a special corner of my heart for those parents who have suffered an unimaginable loss.

In Jessica's own words ...

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Parker and McKenna's first Thanksgiving in the NICU

We've Got This One

Since we lost our daughter, holidays have not been my favorite. Hanging six stockings instead of seven and filling one less Easter basket is enough to make me want to sleep through the day all together. But I have a wonderful husband and four living children who would not dare let me stay in bed during their waking hours so I have learned to face reality and scale holidays back to what I can handle. I just don't have it in me to manage the craziness of big parties and the hustle and bustle of all the holiday happenings that were our life before.

But Thanksgiving I can do. Actually I think I'm pretty good at it.

If there is one thing that losing a child has taught me it is to be thankful. I struggled with this in the beginning, the thought of being thankful when I was bitter and felt cheated out of a lifetime with my daughter, but her last breath left me with an understanding of the fragility of life that will forever change the way I cherish life around me.

I wake up every day thankful down to my toes to have a house full of living, breathing children because I know things could have turned out much differently. Of course there are days they can push my patience to limits I never realized I had but in every tantrum, mess or sibling argument there is always a moment when my mind quiets and I am reminded that I am lucky for the simple fact that they are alive. The gratitude I now have for life is hard to explain. I have watched life stop when I had no idea that it would, to watch it go on and on each day never ceases to amaze me.

When I put my kids down to sleep at night I am very aware of the fact that there are moms out there who pass by an empty nursery each day that they have never been able to use but can't bear to take down and when my husband is running late from work I immediately run through my head to our last conversation to make sure I told him I loved him and the answer is always yes, because I never forget, and I dish out the I love you's like candy in this house.

Sometimes I wonder if it is morbid to think this way, to live each day like it could be the last, but it has become the only way to find peace for us. I don't think I will ever look back and regret living my days so consciously, reminding myself often that all I have is to be cherished.

I don't think my children will look back and be sad that the dishes were piled in the sink while we were all playing hide and seek or that Mommy and Daddy ran to them a little too quickly and smothered them with kisses if they got hurt because we were a tad on the paranoid side.

I think, at least I hope, that we are building our family with a contagious amount of love and gratitude and a deep appreciation for the fact that Thanksgiving is the one holiday that we have in the bag.

Cheryl of Little Bit Quirky is my guest blogger today, and I'm delighted to say that she's also my friend. One of the many amazing, inspiring, hilarious writers I've met online, Cheryl is also the mother of a beautiful six-year-old girl with Asperger's. As Cheryl's award-winning blog will show you, an autism spectrum diagnosis in the family doesn't mean you stop laughing, loving and finding joy in every day. It also doesn't spare you many of the same frustrations that every parent faces -- plus, admittedly, a few quirky extras.

She shares a few very funny memories of life with her daughter in this week's Special Needs Blog Hop, takes us on an interesting shopping trip to Toys R Us in Is The Poop Real, and she speaks, heart-felt, about the challenges that many of us face with choosing to be mothers later in life at D is For Dinosaur. And today, as you'll read below, she talks about an important, sobering issue that affects all mothers everywhere.

Another member of the Spring Chicken Tribe of special needs moms in The SITS Girls network, Cheryl is also the featured blogger at SITS today! Check out her well-deserved spotlight here! And don't forget to stop by Little Bit Quirky and say, "Hi!" I'll bet you stick around and keep reading ...

Take it away, Cheryl ...

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Baby Blues and More

Know someone with an autistic child? This week, ask them how they're doing.

I waited so long to have a baby! First, it took me forever to fall in love with the right guy and get married. Because of this, I didn't have my daughter until I was 38 years old.

Considering that I had never changed a diaper before having my daughter, I had no idea what I was getting myself into! I found myself to be incredibly depressed after the birth. I did have some problems at the end of my pregnancy and had to have my baby over 4 weeks early to prevent her from being stillborn (we got incredibly lucky on that one). Because of this, my daughter had to spend two weeks in the NICU. It was so hard leaving the hospital without her! In addition to all this, my mom was having health problems and had a series of surgeries scheduled, so she wasn't able to come out to help me with the baby.

After having the baby, I found myself crying all the time. My husband encouraged my OB to prescribe me anti-depressants, which I initially didn't think were necessary. I didn't have a firm grasp on knowing how much of my depression was due to a case of the baby blues and how much of it was due to my mother's health problems. We did some research on the medication, and it didn't seem like the right thing to do. Because my daughter was born a little early, she had a hard time staying awake for feedings, which is a big reason why she had to be in the NICU. A lot of her feedings had to be delivered via a feeding tube. A side effect of the anti-depressants was drowsiness for the newborn. This was something I didn't want to increase.

I couldn't understand why I wasn't happy. It was a miracle that my daughter wasn't stillborn. Having a baby was something I wanted for so many years! Yet, I felt like the world's most inept mother. Nothing seemed to come easily! When breast-feeding finally seemed to be working, my daughter became extremely bloated and started projectile vomiting. It turned out that she was unable to digest the proteins in my breast milk, so I had to follow an elimination diet. I wasn't allowed to eat anything containing dairy, soy, nuts, peanuts, eggs, fish, and shellfish. When my daughter was about 8 weeks old, my mother passed away. I was a mess!

What helped me a lot was a phone call. A woman I hardly knew called me to make sure the baby blues weren't getting the better of me. She was a wife of a coworker of my husband, and she was a family therapist. Initially, I had assumed my husband asked her to call me since I had gotten so crazy. She assured me he didn't. She called me because the same thing had happened to her, and she wanted to help me. In fact, she was so moved by her own experiences that she pursued her Master's degree in counseling because of it. She did her thesis on older woman becoming moms. Out of her universe of over 30 women who were over 30 years of age, every single one of them felt exactly as we had: inept and the world's worse mother. Women who have excelled in the workplace and had so much independence have a harder time adjusting to motherhood. We're not use to being so out of control of our environment. Add in the lack of sleep and the hormones and look out!

After having this phone conversation, I felt the great weight of depression leaving me! All I needed to hear was that I was normal--I was not alone in feeling the way I did. I honestly was on the verge of going on medication! All I needed to hear were those simple words--"You are not alone!"

Not long after that, Brooke Shields came out with her book on postpartum depression, "Down Came the Rain." I didn't read the book, but I remember being so thankful that this topic was out in the public domain! I'm sure it helped many women understand that they weren't alone either! Maybe this helped some women to avoid medication, like me! Maybe it encouraged other women to get medication who truly needed it! I think it was great that Brooke Shields took a subject that was taboo and got people talking about it! Fantastic!

This summer, unfortunately, has seen a few cases of mothers murdering their children with autism. It has raised the ire of mothers on the parenting boards screaming for justice for the poor murdered children. I'm sure there will be justice. But to me, the real story is what drove these women to commit these horrible acts of violence. I really think there are a lot of parallels with postpartum depression. True, there are no fluctuating hormones, but there's also no end in sight for these mothers and other mothers raising children with severe autism. I used to attend a support group for mothers of children with special needs. I heard stories of how they had to change diapers and shower their 13 year-old boys. How they had to deal with their children hitting and biting them. How they had to deal with their children never being able to talk--never being able to say, "I love you." How their children had endless tantrums because the world was just too light or too noisy for them. How they had to deal with decreasing state budgets that meant less respite support. I honestly don't know how these women managed. It was heart-breaking to me.

My daughter is extremely high-functioning. We have no doubt that she'll be placed in gifted classes and will attend college someday. She's capable of having friendships with her typical peers. We even have hopes that over time, she'll be so high-functioning that she won't be considered to be on the spectrum anymore. Nevertheless, I had to deal with my own depression at times. This was mostly an issue before we had her diagnosed and had interventions like behavior therapy that helped her so much. It was hard dealing with her tantrums. She'd cry if I made a left turn while driving, but she wanted me to make a right turn. She had endless tantrums over weird, mundane things. It was really hard to cope.

What do mothers do when their children show no sign of progress? What supports are in place to help them? Apparently, more needs to be done. Oh yes, we can describe the mothers who kill as evil and horrible, but does this prevent other cases from happening? I think we need to come up with ways to help women before problems begin.

In my case, I've been impressed that every single interventionist that has been through my door has pulled me aside at some point and asked me how I'm handling the stress of the situation. They've all stated the importance of "me time." Because my daughter has done so well, I've found the stress and depression quickly went away as well. I'm lucky! Regarding the mothers who've committed murder, I can't help but wonder if anyone had taken the time to ask them how they were doing and provided them the help they needed before they murdered their children. Something tells me they didn't have any kind of support--any kind of safety net to help them out. That's terrible, and of course, the ultimate victims were their children.

This shouldn't happen in our society.

By now, you know all about my Spring Chickens Tribe in the blogging network SITS, where our group of moms of special needs kids connects to talk about everything from how to create a button for a blog to how to survive their child's IEP meeting. If you're a mom with a child with any kind of special needs, and you blog, I'd love to invite you to join us. Just go sign up with The SITS Girls (free, of course) and join our tribe in the Spring Chickens Forum.

Today, I'm delighted to introduce you to Melody from My Twisted Stitches. In addition to raising three kids, two of whom struggle with behavioral/emotional disorders, Melody's job is made that much more challenging by her own ADD. Still managing to keep her sense of humor and share her journey with an open, honest heart, Melody is a true inspiration. So stop by My Twisted Stitches, follow Melody or subscribe to her fascinating blog by email. And tell her I said, "Hi!"

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When you have a child with behavioral issues attached to a mood disorder, the entire family is impacted. Sometimes it’s like experiencing the aftershocks from an earth quake where you live with the trepidation that at any moment the slightest shaking could become cataclysmic. Other days you are aware that every moment is a bombardment of agitated aggression, irritation, and frustration let loose in the form of verbal assaults, whining, and general chaos created in your living space. It is an exhaustive time for all, where your adrenaline is constantly flowing and nerves are left twitching. The child initiating the mayhem can spend hours in and out of time-out, or wrestling with consequences, but in the end he/she has succeeded in monopolizing everyone’s time and attention. This is our life.

The behavioral issues reared their ugly head at a tender age, and there was a strong early independence and tenacity that I was actually VERY proud of. These are characteristics I prayed for in my children, but in a “baby” they can certainly be a challenge. I found my first born to be extremely determined, seemingly fearless, and intensely curious. Language acquisition was easy for her; consequently, when with her peers she would be busy “teaching” in her bossy way as she thrived on telling others what and how to do things. Unfortunately, her reactions to their apparent lack of responsiveness toward her were fiercely intense and redirecting her was nearly impossible. She would persist (and still does) in holding onto an idea in order to get her way.

Over time she became extremely manipulative and overbearing. Consequences didn’t seem to make an impact and she rarely showed sadness or remorse for her behavior, rather she would demonstrate intense anger at her consequences or at the person implementing them. In addition, she would often find a way to retaliate later either toward the person who disciplined her or the person she was originally angry with. To make matters worse, small conflicts or differences of opinion could turn into huge issues in which irrational rage would erupt. It was often difficult for her to control her actions. On numerous occasions she would have to be physically contained to prevent damage to others or property. We used to say that she was “freakishly strong.”

Our second child joined the family when our first was 18 months and she was (understandably) very jealous. I became the “mama bear” to protect my newborn from his older sibling and struggled to balance caring for them both. Maybe I established the pattern of victim and aggressor right then, but if so why can’t we break out of that? I do have to say that there are many days when my children have their moments of playing well together and cooperating; it always seems tense and tenuous though. I know they both want to love each other, but there is such intensity of whatever emotion at the moment that they let loose on each other. I know it has been said, that we hurt the ones we love the most, but wow!

Now, there is a third dynamic at play. Along with the birth of our third child came increased jealousy, decreased "Mommy" time, and an increased need for shared space and stuff (which seems to be inherently difficult anyway). Intense behaviors, along with extremely poor emotional regulation began to spiral downward from there. I have sought help every step of the way and I hope we are climbing back up the ladder to stability and emotional security. Each of us have required support to move forward. As a Mom with attention deficit disorder, anxiety, and depression - although being treated myself - I find the struggle to help my children is like running a marathon, DAILY!

I have come to believe that when there is an individual in the household who is as unpredictable and volatile as what we experience on a regular basis, there is NOT a normal family dynamic (albeit there may be no true “normal”). Moreover, when it is the eldest child, the siblings develop in a way that is also uncommon as they require heightened natural defenses just to “survive”, let-alone thrive. The family structure is strained and if the marriage isn’t already a rock, the pressure can crumble its fragile existence.

So what are parents to do? We have to parent the children we have. Can we prevent one child from affecting the entire family?

Melody is a certified teacher, now a stay-at-home mom of three beautifully challenging children; the two oldest (8yrs. and 10yrs. old) have been diagnosed with childhood bipolar disorder while the 3yr. old is learning and growing by leaps and bounds. She blogs at My Twisted Stitches and she is a Parent Blogger for Empowering Parents. Her days are filled with activity that require a tremendous measure of energy, stamina, and courage!