About Me
I'm a full time mother to 4 children, Kyle, Matt, Jess & Alex. I suffer from Chronic Pain and I don't work as a result.
I'm at home a lot and other then my children and my beloved IsisTheFluffyPuppy; my life revolves around my crafts. I learned to knit as a child, my Mum taught me. I taught myself to crochet as a teenager and in 2009 I learned to spin.
For more indepth stuff, read the blog lol and please leave comments, I love knowing that people are reading!
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About Kyle
I fell pregnant when I was only 15. My boyfriend was only 17. I had forgotten my birth control once! He totally freaked and when he was offered a job in Oxford; he took it. He initially asked me to go with him, but certain things he had said when I first told him I was pregnant made me say no.
Kyle was born in September 1991. He was the only baby I had ever seen born with chunky legs - every other baby I have seen has had those little stick legs. He was a healthy 7lbs, pregnancy and birth were normal.
By the time Kyle started nursery school, I knew something wasn't quite right. He was very quick to temper, always had to be at the front of the queue (and would freak if he wasn't), had no concept of 'taking turns', he would often mispronounce words and then go bananas if you tried to correct him.
When he started school; I asked if he could be assessed. A man from the education department came, took one look at me and declared me paranoid! I guess he thought: 'young, single mum, doesn't know what she's talking about, obviously over-protective' - he didn't take into account that I had four kids by then so had something to base my concerns on.
Four years later a teacher referred Kyle and the education department sent another man. This one agreed with me and Kyle was given a statement of Special Needs on grounds of 'learning and behaviour problems'.
It took another four years to get someone to refer him to the people who eventually diagnosed Kyle with having Autistic Spectrum Disorder.
At that point Kyle was moved to a school that had a centre within it especially for autistic children like Kyle. He settled in quickly and grew to love it. He was automatically given a space at a high school with a similar centre.
Kyle left school in 2007 and started college, but they didn't get him any work placements and he just drifted along for the first year. The college asked him to leave when he started having problems controlling his temper and he is currently looking for a volunteer work placement.
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About Matt
I started dating Matt's dad when I was pregnant with Kyle, we had a whirlwind relationship which led to us getting married when Kyle was 11 months old.
I fell pregnant shortly after and then had one of those 'what the hell am I doing?' moments. I realised I'd married the poor guy for all the wrong reasons and I did not want to spend the rest of my life with him. When I was 3 months pregnant; we split up.
My pregnancy progressed as normal and Matt was born 8 days before my 18th birthday. He was quite dopey, due to the amount of pethadine they had given me during labour and it was about 13 hours before I could get him to feed.
He was a beautiful baby. He had really blue eyes, long eyelashes, fingers and toes and very dark hair and weight 7lbs 13oz. My first words when he was born were: 'He looks just like my dad!'
When my Health Visitor saw him at six weeks old, he was still jaundiced so she booked us a hospital appointment.
I nearly didn't attend! The morning of the appointment, he was as pink as could be - but the appointment had been made. So I stuck him in the carrier thingy and got on the bus.
The doctor pretty much sneered when I got there and declared 'this baby isn't jaundiced!'. I explained that I knew that, thankyouverymuch, but he was yesterday and the appointment had been made by a professional so thought I'd best attend! He sighed and sent us to the room with the ultrasound equipment in.
He scanned pretty much all of Matt's body and kept making those really annoying 'hmmmmmmm' doctor noises. Eventually I lost my temper - well he'd been scanning for an hour! - and asked him: "What?" He looked at me blankly as if surprised there was a mother attached to this baby and declared that my gorgeous little blue-eyed, long-lashed, dark-haired baby had a hole in his heart!
You know in movies when they focus on the person and the background seems to slide away into the distance? I had that feeling! My mother had lost two babies to heart problems, one in utero and the other shortly after birth and I was terrified!
The doctor said he'd refer us to cardio and sent us home. I wasn't given time to answer any questions, no one came to talk to me or reassure me, just 'your baby has a heart defect - off you go!'
We were seen by a team from Southampton General on an annual basis who over the years managed to explain to me exactly what was going on.
Matt had a hole above his left aorta. The hole was acting like a vacuum and whenever Matt's heart pumped; the hole sucked the aorta towards it. Some of the blood that flowed through the heart was leaking through the hole.
Over time, the aorta because saggy (like stockings do at the knee after you've worn them all day while sitting at a desk). This meant that it wasn't as flat as it should've been and some of the blood flowing through it leaked backwards down the aorta - this is called aortic regurgitation.
Matt had open heart surgery when he was 10 to close the hole and to give the aorta a bit of a face lift to tighten it up. That was the worst day ever! I had to sit for over five hours while they opened my little boy up and operated on him!
He came through the operation fine and recovered remarkably quickly and we were sent home a week later.
We have since been told that the hole is almost gone, but the aorta is weak and he will, eventually, need to have it replaced.
Matt is currently at college studying catering and hospitality, he works in a local restaurant and wants to work as a chef on the cruise ships!
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About Jess
I started seeing Jess' dad when Matt was six months old. I'd actually met him when I was about 14 through my boyfriend at the time. I hadn't seen him in years. I bumped into him on New Years Eve 1993 going into 1994 at a party. He asked me to dance and we got chatting.
A whole group of us ended up going back to my house to continue the party and he never went home :S
I fell pregnant only a few weeks later and unfortunately, I lost it when I was 10 weeks pregnant. I was devastated and six weeks later, fell pregnant again.
During this time, things started to change. He would have the occasional beer, then it became a beer every evening, then a crate a week - can you see where this is going? He crashed my car while drunk, would disappear for hours and come home drunk.
Then one week, he went to collect our money and didn't come back.
A friend found him 3 days later, unconscious in a bar with less than £30 in his pocket. He had blown two weeks of grocery money for my kids on booze! I threw him out on his ass!
My gorgeous daughter, Jessica-Lyn, was born in February 1995. She had long hair, gorgeous eyes, a beautiful face and weight 8lbs 2oz. She had the cord around her neck, but they managed to remove that quickly and she was fine.
I just sat and stared at her - she was so beautiful!
Five hours after her birth, I was giving her a little cuddle after her feed and she gave a little twitch. I didn't really think much of it - after all, babies twitch, right?
We came home that day and everything seemed ok.
But the next morning, at the same time as before, she did it again. I fed my babies in the dark, so didn't actually see what happened; but her movements felt wrong. I mentioned it to Lucy, my midwife, later that day. Lucy offered to stay for a few hours to see if she did it again, I said that, as far as I knew, she'd only done it at 5am!
Then Jess started to twitch in my arms. It was terrifying! Lucy was amazing and made no effort to take her from me until she had stopped twitching. I watched carefully because Jess went almost purple after twitching and Lucy was pinching the back of her neck and hands - it was about a minute before Jess responded.
We were sent to the Neo-natal department where they diagnosed slight swelling in her brain due to the prolapsed cord and slight oxygen deprivation. They gave her a sedative for that night and said she'd be fine.
They sent us home the next day once the sedative had worn off. I watched her like a hawk.
She had two more seizures and the second was a whopper so I called an ambulance to take us to hospital.
She was admitted onto childrens ward and hooked up to various machines. Eventually she was diagnosed with Neo-natal epilepsy. It was controlled with medication until she was six months old, then the hospital started to wean her off it.
By the time she was 10 months old, she was free of the medication and hadn't had seizure for months. The hospital told me that they considered her clear and that she would be fine, but I was to watch her when she hit puberty as there was a risk it would return then.
Thankfully, that doesn't appear to have happened!
Jess has been fine since then, she enjoys art and is currently studying animal care at college.
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About Alex
When Jess was 3 months old, an old friend took me out for dinner. I'd known him for years and I needed the break.
We had a nice meal and he took me home.
One thing led to another and.......well, I'm sure you can work it out.
I took the morning after pill, but my next period didn't arrive and I was already feeling different. A test confirmed it, I was pregnant again and my dates put my due date on Jess' first birthday.
The father and I had no desire to have a relationship and he vanished pretty quickly, leaving me - yet again - quite literally, holding the baby!
My pregnancy progressed fine, although it wasn't until I was five months pregnant and had my scan that it actually sank in!
Alex waited until a day after Jessica's first birthday to appear. Labour was quite quick and he was born weighing 8lbs 4ozs, but he was looooooooong! So long in fact, that he only fit newborn clothes for a couple of days!
He was so big and Jess so dinky that for the first couple of years; people thought they were twins.
Unfortunately, Alex had a lot of 'Kyle behaviour traits' and was eventually diagnosed as Autistic Spectrum Disorder too. The difference is that Kyle is quite immature, but Alex is very bright.
Due to a lot of problems at school (as mentioned throughout my blog posts), I now school Alex at home.
Alex was diagnosed as suffering from chronic depression in the summer of 2011 when he became quite suicidal. His doctor has also hinted that Alex may be bipolar. He is on medication and hopes to start an Animal Care course with his sister in September 2012.
Alex was diagnosed as suffering from chronic depression in the summer of 2011 when he became quite suicidal. His doctor has also hinted that Alex may be bipolar. He is on medication and hopes to start an Animal Care course with his sister in September 2012.
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