Hello to all my name is Krystle I'm 32 years old, I'm a mother to two amazing beautiful kids which I share with my partner @ausbitbank and we're living in Queensland Australia. To get to know me you need to go back a few years - here's the quickish version...
In early 2008 my partner and I had been living together for a few months, things were going great. We were your stereotypical young Aussie couple we loved to hang out with friends, go out for a drink and have a good time.
In November 2008 we found out we were expecting our first child, it came as a surprise for both of us and after a long and difficult pregnancy in July 2009 we finally got to meet our little angel, she was perfect in every way besides weight she was very very small she could sit in the palm of my hand - premmie clothes fell off her she was just so tiny.
Over the next year our lives changed completely, our lives revolved around our little one and nothing else mattered. She was beautiful and everything you could want in a baby, by six months she loved to be read to her eyes would light up, she loved to watch Dora the explorer and loved to listen to music, by eight months she was sitting up and was building block towers as high as she could reach and she had started talking.
Her sweet little voice would ring out duck duck duck quack quack quack, muma, dadda for some reason ear and hair were also among her first words but each day more would come hola and backpack from dora , she loved songs and whilst she hadn't mastered the words she knew the tunes and would sing along pitch perfect, she was my little angel. Just before her first birthday we found out we were pregnant again and I was again not having the best pregnancy, we had the family come by for her birthday and had a great party. A week or so later we were both sick we were admitted to hospital and both diagnosed with whooping cough. It was a bad six months our little girl was horribly sick struggling to breathe most of the time.
It was a struggle but we got through it but on the other side of this sickness we realised our once chatty little girl had stopped speaking altogether and she no longer interacted with us like she used to, we saw seven doctors about our concerns of our baby girl going silent and they all attributed it to whooping cough saying it will get better with time.
I finally gave birth to my boy in May 2011 still worried about our daughter we didn't give up, shortly after his birth we managed to find a doctor willing to send us to a speech pathologist so we went and then they wanted us to see an occupational therapist so we did, then they both wanted us to see a developmental paediatrician so we did.
This all took months and now my little girl was 3 years old we had been fighting for answers for well over a year now, within ten minutes of meeting the developmental paediatrician he had looked over all the paper work we had provided and we answered a few more questions, we were given the answer we had been searching for... Our little girl has Autism and suffered a massive regression.
In shock we spent months doing research and finding out what the best therapy would be for our girl and our family, finally at three and a half years of age we had my daughter enrolled in an autism specialist school to provide her with full time therapy that she requires.
It was half way through her first year there when we also had her brother diagnosed with Autism as well, he was just two years old but he was completely non verbal he didn't make any attempt to communicate at all and struggled with any form of physical contact.
After two years at private therapy my daughter started attending a special school and now also has an intellectual impairment diagnosis - my son has only just this year entered special school attending his prep year and is undergoing a further intellectual impairment diagnosis as well so he can stay in special school.
My children are my world and have been my primary focus for the past seven years, my days have revolved around strict routines, doctors, therapists, teachers, research and paperwork oh so much paperwork.
Life didn't turn out like we had planned it has been hard, anyone with children can appreciate how hard it is to watch your child struggle all you can do is be there for them and help them in any way you can, this is what myself and my partner have strived to do - we have been the voice that our children haven't yet found, we will fight for them always.
We have struggled emotionally, mentally and most of all financially the two years each of our children went to full time therapy cost us a quarter of a million dollars my partner worked from home when he could find work and I started a successful home business but after 3 years in the end it was too much commitment and I needed to scale down to focus on the kids.
By the time my son was finishing his final year we had run through our life savings and had sold all household items we could live without, we'd received help from the salvation army to help us get by but we still struggle financially even now six months after he finished there.
For the first time in seven years life is beginning to settle down our kids are both at special school and have standard hours they are doing really well there and the staff are simply amazing they go above and beyond our wildest expectations. Both our children have started to talk only a few words each but getting better all the time my son can now handle not only being touched but will even give us cuddles when he's in the right mood. After waiting five years I finally heard the words “I love you” from my daughter and just in the past two months from my son, I will treasure the moments forever.
Our children have a long journey ahead of them and we will be there with them every step of the way - it wont be easy we will face new challenges as time goes on but we know our hard work pays off and our beautiful loving children will always be worth the effort.
For the past seven years our life has revolved around just getting by, we haven't had a night off except for the birth of my son, not that you can really call that a night off. In the whole time my partner and I haven't been able to go out at night, without the kids as we have no local support network capable of handling their care needs.
During the past seven years I have found my love for reading and writing renewed, an escape from a sometimes daunting reality I've found my family in. I have always had a strong passion for stories especially in the fantasy genre, when I was younger I was certain I would be an actor one day, then my passion for music took over - I still love to sing and write songs, but I have found my true passion is writing. I love being able to create a whole other reality to fully immerse yourself in where your only limitation is what you can imagine.
For years now I have been collecting ideas for a novel and I have started writing and I intend to eventually release a novel but this will take some time. My partner has encouraged me to just put out some of my work to get some feedback on it. I have decided to try and write some shorter stories based in the world I have created and see if there's any interest out there for content like this on steemit.
This is my passion and I feel as though my family is in a place where I can spend the time needed to write and I can start really commit to getting this story out, it's been running through my mind for years now I just hope eventually my stories can help someone else escape their troubles even if only for a short time.
Let me know if this sort of mythological fantasy content sounds interesting and I'll try to get some stories up soon.