Rishi’s Sensory Garden

3 years + 35 weeks ago was the best day of our lives. After months of shots, pills, tests, and procedures, we were finally pregnant. When you were born, we were relieved to see you were healthy and happy. You hit milestones, played with us, spoke in all of your languages and especially after losing your brother, Veer, we were thankful for our happy, healthy baby.

At around 18 months you went mute. We thought you were just focused on walking, but something was off. Little by little, we lost more and more of you and by age two, we had nothing to say about milestones. You stopped looking at us, you stopped engaging-something was wrong. We started speech, we did screeners, but we were in denial. There was no way you had autism. Autism looked like this (insert description), and that wasn’t you. The scores on the screeners increased and we struggled to find someone to test you.

We started speech, OT, and other Kindering services and you started to improve. You started to babble again. We held preferred objects next to our eyes and you started looking at us again. You started responding to your name again. You started playing with us again.

We fought to get you tested and took time off of work to put you in a research study. Months later we got a confirmation of autism. And then the real journey began.

Getting on waitlists for ABA therapy. Enrolling you in developmental preschool. Evaluation after evaluation. Sleep regression that made your parents zombies and daily trips to Wiggleworks, the boat in Bellevue Square, the pool, and parks so you would hopefully sleep for more than four hours.

But don’t worry, baby Rishi. We will fight for you, baby boy and make sure you live the best life you can possibly live. You will have friends and family who will accept you for who you are and love everything about you.

We’ll still show you the world, learn all the languages, and do all the hikes. We will take you everywhere and “Maren” and Baba will educate every dirty look. We also really hope you like Pokémon Go so you can nerd out with us.

We’re grateful for the years at Eastgate that showed us the power of special educators and the miracles they perform every single day. Together, we will get you there.

For Rishi’s birthday, we are raising money to level our backyard and get him a trampoline to help with stimming and to hopefully decrease self-injurious behaviors. Funds raised will also be used to purchase sensory items, a bed for kids with special needs and self-injurious behavior, and other gear for his safety. We need our village now more than ever. We’d also love to have you over for playdates so Rishi can practice his social skills with friends. Please support if you can. If not, just stop by and support with your presence.