How do you handle additional life challenges?

[pocooso]

It has been nearly four years since losing my daughter. She was murdered by a drunk driver. My husband lost his leg, and his other leg was permanently and severely injured.

Since then, I had a son. Things seemed to be getting better.

However, he was diagnosed with failure to thrive, which is used to describe children who are below the third percentile for size. Initially, he was proportionately small, but now his weight is 1/1000; once it was even 1/5000. His height was 1/100, but has improved to 13 percentile. Dr. Says he is quite underweight. So my son sees a nutritionist. Not a big deal to me since I am small (93 pounds when I got pregnant with my first child). He is 30 months old.

However, this kid has sleep problems. Falls asleep around 11:30 pm, and occasionally 1a.m.. It is exhausting. I work full time. My son can run a mile while my husband takes a brisk walk. My son is active (climbs tables, throws things in the garbage, takes stuff out of garbage, unplugs phone, disconnects Internet connection, opens windows and doors, grabs food off counters, etc.).

The doctor says I need to feed him more food. I make him eat a second "dinner" at around 9 p.m.. He nurses around 10:30 pm for comfort. He awakens at 2:30 am, but goes back to sleep if I take him out of the crib(he can climb out). We don't do cry-it-out because he gets into mischief (ie takes off his diaper and makes a mess). He nurses around 6 am. He wakes up around 8:30 am and takes a 2-hour nap at day care.

A different doctor evaluated him and said he is behind on speech and thinks he might have autism. Seriously, possibly two problems, one of which is not curable! Now he will have a home teacher, family therapist, speech therapist, and nutritionist appointments. I feel overwhelmed! Just so upsetting to have a life that only gets harder.

Meanwhile, my husband has never had a good prosthetic fit and this limits his ability to help with the baby. He is great, but the leg is in bad shape.

Work only gets more demanding. I had to work this past Saturday and Mother's Day.

So pathetic that while we have plenty of food to eat, my son is so underweight.

How can I cope?

[babymichael]

Take a deep breath, Say a prayer,or a curse word which ever works best. Put your feelers out in your area for help.

[myheart]

I am sorry, I can feel the stress and concern and that you are overwhelmed. Start with one problem at a time. Every day deal with one problem at a time. Each day you can put some time into thinking about one of your concerns, then put it aside, give time to the next, but don't go back to the first concern. Once you deal with it that day, it's off the table to worry about. Do you have family you can rely on? Support groups your doctors can recommend? Multiple support groups. Sometimes just talking about everything you are going through lessens the panic and fear. Thinking of you...

krista

[Clara Hinton]

Life can get excruciatingly difficult. If only we had one problem at a time to work through -- one grief at a time. But life doesn't always work that way. I urge everyone to build some sort of support system that will help you through the more challenging days. Everybody needs a friend who is a good listener, a person who will be the one we call when we need laughter to help break the dark side of grief, and someone to share our heartache with. I learned the hard way that we can't make it alone!

I also love the idea of reaching out into your community for support groups, a church with caring members, and a good doctor. My thoughts and prayers are with you!