Monday 17 June 2013

Birthdays, Cakes and Great Ormond Street

Stephs Two Girls June 17, 2013 Baking, cakes, GOSH, GOSH diagnosis, Great Ormond Street, Holy Communion, Numberjacks, One Direction, OT, Pathological Demand Avoidance, PDA

May and June are always slow blogging months for me, mainly because I have so much going on in 'real' life that I struggle to find time for the computer! I do miss it though, so I thought on the eve of my 41st Birthday (yes, I am that old, really, I know I don't look a day over 35, thank you....) that I would do a quick update of what's being going on.

In a nutshell, birthdays. Oh and a Holy Communion, work, half term holidays, OT (Occupational Therapy) appointments and a couple of other bits and bobs too. 'Busy, busy, busy, always busy, lots to do', to coin a Sasha catchphrase.

So I thought I'd just drop in a couple of pictures to pass the time.... a snapshot of the proof of a lovely family Holy Communion picture; family photos are pretty difficult to get with a child who doesn't stay still for long:

Then my two birthday cakes for the girls this year. Tamsin's 8th birthday cake in May, a One Direction Disco Ball cake, done to her very specific blueprint:

Followed by a bright yellow Numberjacks 6 cake for Sasha yesterday (which was going to be a chocolate hedgehog until a week ago - luckily she gave me just enough time when she changed the brief!):

Sadly I'll always have the scar on my thumb to remind me of this after not being quite careful enough with the knife whilst sculpting the frozen cake. Do not do try this at home.

So I wonder what gorgeous creation I'll get for my birthday tomorrow?! Actually, I'm like my girls on the cake front - I don't particularly like eating them, I just enjoy decorating them. Shame I do enjoy most other bad foods though, waistline never seems to go down....

Tomorrow we are off to GOSH/Great Ormond Street (yes, birthday treat for me), to see the team who specialise in High Functioning Autism. I'm a little nervous, despite requesting the appointment ourselves and having to wait five months for it, as I'm not quite sure what to expect. It's two and a half hours, and it'll be a lot of talking and questions to answer, for us and for Sasha. Let's hope she likes them and agrees to stay longer than 10 minutes!

Part of me is hoping that they will agree with my thoughts that Sasha has PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance), as to have a professional put that in writing will just help smooth her transitions a little more. On the other hand it won't really change who Sasha is and the fact that people really have to get to know her and not just treat her as any other child, or indeed as they may treat any other child with autism.

There's that old saying: 'if you've met one child with autism, you've met one child with autism'. Sure, there are some common traits, but I see few between Sasha and other autistic children I know, and few between Sasha and other NT children I know (like our older daughter!). However I do know she has some truly amazing traits and we love her to pieces - never a dull moment around here, that's for sure!

For the next post about our visits to GOSH, see:
Great Ormond Street visit; High Functioning Autism or PDA?

To find out more about our experiences, please check out our 'About Us' page. If you are looking or more information on Pathological Demand Avoidance, why not try some of these, my most popular posts?