So once upon a time, I became a single Mum. I had met and been with Ruby’s father for three years when we had Ruby Tuesday….. and although not planned, we had talked a lot about having a family one day. I thought we were on the same page…… turns out we were not. For the first year of Ruby’s life we tag teamed our Friday and Saturday nights, so that every weekend we each had one night in with the baby, and one full night out until 5pm the following evening where we could do what we liked. Parting was what we did leading up to the pregnancy….. so partying is what we continued to do once she was born. This was only made more possible with my inability to be able to breastfeed her. We realised quite soon into the pregnancy (well I did anyway…) that Rob was not coping so well with the idea of becoming a Dad. The sacrifices that would surely come for him were starting to eat away at his mind…. and he was out more and more as I lay at home vomiting into a bucket all day and night. My reality kicked in the moment I hit ten weeks pregnant, because I ended up with nine full months of morning sickness…. so I had to literally give up everything fun and yummy overnight!!! I always find it takes the men a little longer to feel the changes that a baby brings to a family, because it isn’t physical at all for them until they are being woken all night and helping out during the days. To be honest I knew once Ruby was born that we were biding our time as a couple. When we celebrated Ruby’s first birthday, there were fifty odd adults, almost no kids and I was drinking bourbon and dry out of a giant stein glass at three am the next morning knowing we were really celebrating making it through a year without killing each other. We separated shortly afterwards. Single motherhood. My first minority group. Rob kept no regular contact up with Rubes. The only regular event in his life was taking drugs and partying actually. In the year that we lived six streets apart I think he had her overnight twice, and probably saw her ten times…. and that was while I was there. When Rubes was only 18 months old I met Trenton again, and we hooked up almost immediately. (We had met 12 months before as mates, through mates…. but both being partnered at the time we didn’t even consider getting together……. but we both admitted later on down the track that we thought of each other a lot in that year.) Things with Trenton went as I’d always hoped they would have with Rob. He loved hanging as a family, and taking Rubes out and doing all those wonderful things you get to do with young kids, watching the incredible world around you through their eyes. Christmases became like magic again, family catch ups were more often and more fun, and life just generally started to get good. Really bloody good. Within eight months almost to the day from the 8th of March in 2005 when we’d hooked up, he had proposed, I had accepted and on August the 11th 2006 the following year, we were ten weeks pregnant with Poppy and married. Like I’ve always said, when you know, you just know. Most of you people know about the rest of our story….. But aside from being a wonderful one for eight years, we were not without our problems. It was quite apparent to me from when Ruby hit 14 months old that she was different from the other kids. I thought she had hit the terrible two’s very early, and even though she didn’t walk until she was 19 months old, she could hold an adult conversation. It was bizarre. She was ridiculously intelligent and bright, but wouldn’t hit her physical and emotional developmental stages at the right time. Sometimes they were early, but sometimes very late. I took her to pediatricians, family doctors, a psychologist and an occupational therapist…. and even did a parenting technique course when she was just 20 months old as I thought maybe the Doc’s were right, and she had just inherited my strong personality type! I was wrong. Two weeks before her sixth birthday after years of struggling with her challenging behaviour, I met Dr Luke. Dr Luke listened to my story while Rubes played with the receptionist…. and then he asked me if I felt like I’d been ramming my head into a wall for nearly six years. I burst into tears at the realisation that I wasn’t just a shit Mum after all, but that there was actually going to be a reason for her behaviour. He diagnosed her with Aspergers Syndrome, and the rest is history really. As soon as I had an actual name to research, it was on! Trenton and I read thousands of personal stories, Autism sites, blogs and whatever books we could lay our hands on. I joined an intensive Autism course where I made some great contacts, and I started researching support groups. This would become my second Minority Group. Mother of a kid with special needs. We wanted to know everything we could to make this child’s life a great one. She had struggled with friendships her entire life….. and even at three at the daycare centre, the ladies would comment on how she’d scope the room in the morning, pin her sights on one kid, and come hell or high water that kid would have to play with her till the end of the day or she’d threaten to hurt them. It didn’t make sense, and it hurt to get this feedback from the staff. At three and a half years old when Pops was born, it went further downhill and fast. We assumed she’s get over it after the idea of a sister had settled in her brain, but it never did “go back to normal.” So halfway through Prep when she was finally diagnosed, and after six months of spending every other day in the principal’s office in trouble even ending up with her own private table in the classroom where no one would sit next to her in fear of getting in trouble or being threatened…… we finally realised what was up. Her brain would forever be wired differently, she would never learn like a neurotypical child, and she would struggle socially for the rest of her entire life. A life sentence in some ways…… but there was nothing we could do but help her on her journey. When I found PSN (Parent Support Network) I still remember vividly walking into the Coonara Community House absolutely terrified at the thought of what other kinds of people I might find in such a group. What kinds of disabilities would I see? Would they be obvious? I needn’t have worried….. man I met some wonderful people that day. And then every fortnight for the next couple of years…… They turned my life around in the sense that they had already had so much time in the game, and they just simplified the rules for me. Not only that, but I realised how lucky I was with Rubes…… she may not be an easy kid, but she could do so much for herself where there were other kids there that would need 24 hour a day, 7 day a week care forever. I met a few families with ASD kids who also had second children that were not on the spectrum. We all quickly became mates. It’s incredible how different you can feel suddenly just by sitting with like minded people. Bought together by tragedy or loss, or just by being plain unlucky…. the camaraderie one feels when you’re “not the only one” is priceless and irreplaceable. Those years where Trenton and I fought and struggled to have Ruby’s voice heard at her school, with her peers, losing friendships, moving schools, moving homes….. those were some of the toughest years I remember. It seemed sometimes that nothing we did or tried made much of a difference to her at all, but exhausted the shit out of us and pushed us to breaking point many times. Poppy suffered by default as Ruby’s behaviour demanded all of our attention, and she also suffered at the hand of her sister who clearly envied the ease of Poppy’s life in comparison to her own. Lose, lose you could say. By eight she was medicated for her extreme OCD behaviour, and severe anxiety disorder…. and has not been able to not me medicated since. Although we’ve tried many times. I truly thought there could be nothing harder than watching your babies struggle in just simple everyday life, but clearly I had no vision of what was coming. I never took my relationship with Trenton for granted…… truthfully, not ever. I had experienced the kind with no help, high expectations and much anger and sadness. So I wasn’t letting a day pass by without letting my man know what he meant to me… in fact there was barely a few hours between each call, email or text message. The irony is not lost on me that I spent eight years telling him at least every other day that if he died on me and left me to raise those girls alone, that I would kill myself and then haunt him for the rest of our days in limbo……. I pushed him to quit smoking in fear of him dying stupidly at his own hand, and I begged him to stay healthy enough not to have a heart attack by the age of forty. It literally was my biggest fear because of the level of stress that we shared already in our home. Man I wish I’d never said those words to him. I know it would not have changed the outcome, but it kills me now to remember how many times I threatened it to him. I’m not remotely spiritual or superstitious, but damn I hope I didn’t jinx myself by always worrying that I would lose him. On the 23rd July 2013, I found my third Minority Group. Widowhood. The two years that have followed I can only hope will have been the worst the girls and I will ever suffer. Losing your Dad, your Hubby and best mate, your past, your present and what would have been your future all in the space of 24 hours is definitely not something that I’d like to see anyone else experience. But I have. When I discovered that there was only one support group running in Victoria for Widows and Widowers under the age of 50, I quickly joined up, only to work out weeks later that it wasn’t being run very well, and there had only been two meetups in the City, one of which had seen a brand new Widower and his baby turn up alone. I emailed the administrator offering my help, and she emailed me the link to become the new administrator. She was clearly not coping with her new role in life, but I knew I needed this group to become something, just as our PSN group had grown and then those wonderful families with special needs kids had become my lifelong friends. So was born the WWSG (Widow and Widower Support Group) and I can assure you I would not have survived in tact if I hadn’t discovered them. When we welcome our new members into the gang, we always say “Welcome to our group, we’re sorry you needed to find us, but glad that you did none the less.” It’s so important to have people around you that understand the pain you’re in, because no matter how well meaning a mate or family member can be, they can never really get what you’re going through until they have lived through it themselves. I woke up this morning feeling grateful after I’d had my Widows night out on Saturday night (which was an absolute ripper of a night by the way), followed by my Widows and kids luncheon yesterday which ended up on my deck in Montrose with the whole lot of the families coming back to my house for coffee. These people have pulled me through some shithouse times, and I have hopefully helped them through too. I can only hope that we will hang onto each other for as long as this ride shall take….. even if there is no end. Love you guys xxxx
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