Who needs therapy?

After a brief period of feeling better, I have sunk down into the dumps again. I am not really sure what sets things off, what makes me convinced that things are not okay and that they never will be. But I look at my beautiful baby and this little gnawing feeling starts in my stomach. It makes me want to wring my hands just to have some physical release of the overwhelming despair. I honestly thought that I have been depressed or anxious before. Now I know that the real thing is much more sinister and difficult to snap out of.

On Thursday I felt so terrible that I had to call my father sobbing once again about Graham and his behavior. He is so calming with his "doctor" voice honed through 30 some-odd years of practice. His message, however, does not really calm me. He knows that I could be right, that our lovely son may never interact with us normally. So he has to hedge his bets rather than tell me that of course everything will be okay. He asks me if I have talked to the therapist lately, what the neurologist found during his exam and slowly I start to be able to function. I feel better momentarily, if even because I have released all kinds of chemicals through my flood of tears, but soon the gnawing begins again.

Part of the despair is actually stress. Stress that I will not be the kind of mother that drags her child kicking and screaming out of the throes of autism. That my boy who loves windows will always love them, that he will not end up in a mainstream school ahead of grade level as Patricia Stacey's son did. Stress that something I did while pregnant or even before caused our son to develop more slowly. Stress that we will wait and wait and wait for treatment while our son slowly slips into his own world.

I am hoping and praying that Floortime will be our salvation, but I am worried that I will simply be too lazy to do as many hours as they say you need to do. Can I really do 6 hours a day of handing toys to Graham? Will I slowly lose my mind? Will I sacrifice his eventual recovery to read a book or go to a movie?

I can hear my husband's voice in my head right now that all of this is premature, that no one has diagnosed our son with anything. He even scores okay on the Denver II! But a mother knows... I never really understood that trite saying until now. I just wish I didn't.