Where's my Mitu?

Yappy and I went to see the movie Delhi - 6. Sonam Kapoor's name in the movie is Bittu but for some reason my self-confessed hard of hearing husband thought it was Mitu!!! So it was decided there and then that if we ever we have a daughter her nick name should be Mitu. That was February 2009.

December 2010, we are blessed with a daughter. Straightaway we start calling her Mitu. Born just two weeks before due date through a non-complicated c-sec operation, Mitu was a healthy baby weighing 2.75kg at birth.

Things were progressing well. At three months she was making cooing sounds, head balance absolutely fine, at six months Mitu is sitting without support, at nine months she is crawling beautifully and by her first birthday our baby is up and running! All milestones on time...no problem...

Wait...may be there is a problem.

The day Mitu started walking..she took to running! There was no stopping our baby Bolt! Run run run..fall on the sofa..back to run.. run ..run. All day...am not tired...even in the night I can run..run..run. And guess what? Despite so much running around, Mitu couldn't sleep well at night. At first, we thought that the poor baby's legs must be hurting that's why she is not able to sleep. I took to pressing her legs before sleep. That helped a bit but still she would get up in the middle of the night and not sleep back till morning.

At the same time I also started getting worried about Mitu not picking up her first words. I remember asking our pediatrician at 15 month vaccination visit about it. He asked a few questions and advised me to spend more time talking to the child and keep a close watch.

Mitu was about 17 months, when I observed a slight squint in all her pics since she turned one. Yappy and I took her to another pediatrician with her apparent squint at the top of our mind. Dr Ramalingam was clear that squint is not an issue with our child but its something else. She should be talking by now. If not in sentences then at least a few basic words. What's worse, she is not even responding to her name and not following instructions at all!

He suggested we visit a development pediatrician and referred us to Dr Jyoti Bhatia. And the day we went to meet her was perhaps one of the most depressing days of our parenthood. Dr Jyoti took an M-Chat test on Mitu. She failed on various parameters of a typically developing child. When she asked me to call out to my child...Mitu would just not respond. I'd go on mitu..meetuuu..meeeetttuuuuuuu...but Mitu was slipping in her own world with a fixation for plastic bottles!

Imagine your child not even acknowledging your presence forget about following instructions! Embarrassment? no..insult?..may be shame? But these expressions would mean nothing in front of what we were about to discover.

Dr Jyoti Bhatia raised an alarm. Told us to get a hearing test done ASAP, start talking to Mitu in only one language (as ours is multilingual household), start with an early intervention program as soon as possible and yes..start calling her by the name that you would want to use for school.

That's the day I lost my Mitu and the struggle to find Avani began.

It's been unbelievable four years...

The idea of starting this blog was in my mind for a long time. Didn't know where to start and how. But now just a couple of weeks before Avani turns four, I thought this is the time to share some unbelievable moments of our journey! 'OUR' - particularly mine and Avani's. My beautiful daughter on Autism Spectrum Disorder and the one human being who is single handedly teaching me nuances of motherhood :) ...rather human kind!

Avu is gonna be four on December 11th. The last one year has been particularly important for us in achieving some milestones that we have been waiting for a long long time. Three months back she acquired imitation skills. First action and within two weeks started imitating meaningful words. A couple of weeks later mumma...mummy..mai..became more relevant.

More on these newly acquired skills and progress since birth a lil later but first lemme introduce you to my baby - Avani.

Avu is a naughty, happy, energetic (sometimes hyperactive), beautiful baby. She smiles often (sometimes when she laughs heartily, even if its for no reason, you feel like looking at her face non-stop and chanting touch wood touch wood touch wood a billion times), she hugs and kisses me often (but why she touches my ears all the time, and kisses them is beyond my understanding), she sings too (although her words and tunes are all original), her favourite pass time activity is to kiss her toys and throw them! (how original is that!...kissing them before hurting) and of course these days her mission is to explore each and every corner of the house (whts in that drawer in kitchen, lemme check the top most shelf, how does the toilet commode work, how about opening the fridge, where has mumma kept my favorite chocolate or that snack that I love to eat etc etc...)

And who am I? Well, these days its difficult to find me sans Avani. Her grandmother calls her my tail! She follows me wherever I go. A lot of times because she wants to and sometimes because I don't give her a choice. Avani and I are almost always together. Going to school, going to therapy sessions, going to park, going to market, going to nani's house...wherever and whatever...I dont know if its a coincidence or a fact but lately I have been commented or rather complimented quite often that Avu is a complete xerox of me. Not just relatives or friends but even pure strangers have walked up to me to tell the same :) I feel proud and blush coz I know Avu is a beauty!

So I am basically a mother, a working mother, a hard working mother, and sometimes a sulking mother, a complaining mother, an irritated mother...but most definitely a special mother to a special child.