He Survived Everything.
When I was pregnant with Dylan, things didn’t always go well.
First, very early in my pregnancy, I passed a blood clot – a horrible glob of something fell into the toilet. Bill and I cried for two hours, thinking I’d miscarried, until we finally saw the doctor.
I got an ultrasound. “I don’t know what you passed,” said the doctor, staring at the black and white screen. “But your baby is just fine.”
Then we really cried. The baby was fine!
A few months later, after we’d finally decided on Dylan’s name, the doctor saw something on baby Dylan’s brain – “a spot” – whatever that meant.
“It’s a marker for Down’s Syndrome,” the doctor told me. “It doesn’t guarantee that your baby has it, but it is a marker. Because of your advanced age (35), I would recommend getting an amniocentesis, just so you can be prepared.”
During the amnio, baby Dylan seemed to be reaching for the needle – even then always active, wanting to touch whatever was nearby.
We had to wait several days for the results. Those were hard, hard days.
Finally, we got the results. “We can’t guarantee that your baby is fine,” they said, “but the amnio showed no signs of Down’s, spina bifida or cystic fibrosis.”
Again, we cried. This time, they were tears of relief.
My water broke a full 24 hours before Dylan was born. He was eight days late, but never fully dropped. Someone guessed that his foot might be stuck in the umbilical cord.
My “all natural” childbirth became the “try anything” approach. Eventually, an emergency C-section gave us our a surprisingly perfect baby boy.
I had no idea that Dylan wasn’t “typical.” I didn’t know that zipping around like a Tasmanian Devil was unusual for a toddler. I thought all babies did that.
And I didn’t know that by the age of 2, most kids could say “white” and “yellow” instead of “ye” and “yo.”
I also didn’t know that most toddlers can’t spell their own names or count past a hundred. And I didn’t know that empathy was reserved for ages 8 and up; Dylan had true empathy before he ever got into preschool – at two.
During preschool, I blamed Dylan’s little friend, Nicholas, when Dylan got into trouble. By kindergarten, I knew I’d blamed the wrong child.
By first grade, Dylan was so bored, he could have slept through school and still been passed along to the next grade. Truthfully, he could have started school in 3rd grade.
The gifted program was Dylan’s first truly wonderful school year. For the first time, he was interested in learning.
There were some suspicions that Dylan had ADHD – but no one ever really “diagnoses” ADHD. Instead, everyone weighs in – teachers, parents, friends. Then the doctor writes a note to the school to “help” with “problem areas.”
Dylan carries that rather haphazard diagnosis with him to this day. In a way, it was helpful. But being gifted – and bored – caused him far more difficulty than ADHD ever could.
And now, finally, Dylan is graduating. He survived everything, and is leaving school with a real sense of himself and who he is – which is way more than I can say for myself at that age.
I wonder sometimes, still, about that spot on his brain – that “marker.” Did it make him gifted? Is it also a marker for autism-spectrum disorders? Maybe that spot is a “marker” for something that no one will discover for a hundred years.
However it happened, I am just proud of the man Dylan has become.