The Journey
I didn’t become a mom and instantly feel like myself again.
I became a mom and felt like someone had handed me a beautiful, fragile new life… and quietly replaced my body, my brain, my sleep, my identity, and my confidence overnight. Everyone tells you it’s hard, but it’s different when you’re living inside the hard. The days blurred together in those first few months. After a while, my emotions felt too big and too close to the surface. I was learning how to keep a tiny human alive while my own nervous system felt like it was running on fumes.
And then there was the sleep. Or lack of it.
The Early Days
Charlie didn’t sleep the way people said babies sleep. He didn’t settle easily. He didn’t drift off and stay down. Nights felt like a loop I couldn’t escape: rocking, bouncing, pacing, shushing, starting over. I remember staring at the clock in disbelief, bargaining with time, and feeling my whole body brace for the next wake-up before the last one had even ended.
I want to say this carefully, because I know so many parents carry guilt around sleep. Some babies don’t sleep well and it doesn’t “mean” anything. But for us, looking back, it was one of the earliest patterns that later made sense. Charlie struggled with self-soothing in a way that felt deeper than typical newborn fussiness. It wasn’t just “he’s a bad sleeper.” It felt like his system couldn’t find the calm. Like he didn’t know how to downshift. This would come to make sense at 12 months of age when I could not ignore my intuition about ADHD. It took Charlie 12 months to learn to sleep through the night independently. By then, I was chronically exhausted.
Postpartum Anxiety
At the time, I was also dealing with postpartum anxiety.
That part was quiet and loud at the same time. Quiet because I didn’t talk about it much. Loud because it colored everything. I loved my baby and still felt overwhelmed. I was grateful to be a stay at home mom and still felt sad. I could be holding him and feel completely detached at times.
When you’re in postpartum depression, you don’t just need more sleep; you need support. Real support. The kind that says: You’re not failing. Your brain and body are healing from something enormous. You deserve care, too.
Seeing It Through an OT Lens
As an occupational therapist, I live in the world of regulation: sensory processing, nervous system cues, the way environment and routine can either support a person or overwhelm them. But being a professional didn’t make it easier to be a new mom. If anything, it sometimes made it harder — because I was watching myself and my own child struggle and I couldn’t “fix” it with a checklist.
I just kept showing up.
When Patterns Started to Emerge
Fast forward to Charlie’s first birthday. The baby stage had passed, but the pattern was still there: this big, fast-moving inner engine. When he started walking, it wasn’t simply a “milestone achieved.” It was the way he moved. The speed. The intensity. The constant seeking. The way his body seemed to be looking for information — more movement, more input, more of everything — like his system needed it to feel organized.
That’s the moment the “OT part of me” got very quiet and very alert. Not because I wanted something to be wrong; I didn’t. I wanted ease for him. I wanted ease for us. But I could see, even then, that he experienced his body and the world differently. The word I keep coming back to is dysregulation. This is deeply different from misbehavior or defiance. He was not “too much,” but instead, I saw a nervous system that had a harder time finding calm and staying there.
I didn’t have all the answers. I didn’t have a diagnosis. I had a mother’s intuition and an OT’s pattern-recognition. And I had a growing realization that the motherhood journey I was dealt was going to be different and unique.
That realization was heartbreaking… and also freeing.
Because once I stopped trying to parent Charlie like he had a nervous system he didn’t have, I could start learning how to support the nervous system he did have.
What Actually Helped
Over time, we learned that Charlie didn’t need “stricter.” He needed support. The tools that helped him and our family included more predictability, more movement, more connection, and a parent who could stay steady when he couldn’t. Our progress didn’t come from forcing him into compliance. It came from understanding what his body was communicating and building a life that helped him feel safe, capable, and regulated.
Two Children, Two Nervous Systems
And then Cade came along.
Raising a second child, only 2.5 years behind Charlie, gave me a contrast I didn’t expect. Not because one journey was “better” than the other, but because it made the differences undeniable. With Cade, certain skills seemed to land more naturally. He learned to self-soothe himself to sleep by 8 weeks old. Settling, shifting between activities, recovering from frustration, finding his way back to baseline were all easier for Cade.
For the first two years of Charlie’s life, I was constantly co-regulating. I don’t mean the occasional extra snuggle. I mean living with my nervous system partially wrapped around his: tracking his cues, anticipating overwhelm, preventing the spiral when I could, and holding him through it when I couldn’t. It was the steady rhythm of my days. I was his external regulator — the calm he couldn’t reliably access yet..
Where We Are Now
Now Charlie is eight, and the co-regulation hat doesn’t need to be used nearly as often. But it doesn’t disappear completely, either.
There are still moments when he needs to borrow my calm, such as after a long day at school with very little movement or stimulation (this is HARD for ADHD). The difference is that today, I don’t panic when it happens. I don’t take it as a sign that we’re “back to square one.” I recognize it for what it is: a nervous system asking for support.
And the best part is, he knows what tools to look for to help himself. He has learned the strategies himself. He knows that when he starts to “ping” as we like to call it; that he needs to go outside. He knows that when the pitch of his voice changes, it means to step away and take a break.
The Biggest Shift
And the biggest shift over these eight years wasn’t only Charlie.
It was me.
I stopped parenting from the constant question of, “What am I doing wrong?” and started parenting from a deeper understanding of how development actually works. I took everything I knew as an occupational therapist (child development, sensory processing, neuroscience, the building blocks of regulation) and I put it into action in our everyday life. Not as a perfect plan, but as a way of seeing.
I learned that consistency doesn’t always look like the same response for every child. It looks like meeting each child with what their nervous system needs to be successful. I learned that support isn’t “spoiling.” It’s scaffolding. And scaffolding can be slowly removed as skills grow.
Charlie’s success was greatly dependent on the clear boundaries that me and my husband held for him. If there is one suggestion I could give every parent who is raising a Neurodiverse child, it is that. Get crystal clear on your boundaries and limitations and hold them. When you can give this to your child consistently, no matter what the situation then you will all thrive. It also helps to decrease anxiety, which is a common co-morbidity of ADHD. Show up and be consistent.
Why Nature Changed Everything
The major shift that helped my mental health was nature. We started going outside every day multiple times per day to give Charlie the runway he needed to move and explore.
At first, it was bumpy. There were tears from both of us. But then, before long, I saw the adaptive response that an OT looks for in children. There was less sensory overload with clothing or sunscreen. There was less tactile defensiveness at the beach or in the dirt. There were moments of quiet, peace and regulation for both of us.
Nature didn’t just give Charlie a place to move. It gave both of us space to regulate.
Outside, his nervous system didn’t have to work as hard to stay organized. And mine didn’t have to work as hard to hold everything together. The world got bigger, the pressure got smaller, and our connection got easier to find.
That’s when I realized: we weren’t just “getting fresh air.” We were building a foundation.
The Bigger Picture
Nature offers movement without confinement. It gives sensory input without the harshness of fluorescent lights, crowded spaces, and constant “no’s.” It provides rhythm, novelty, and predictability all at once. It asks kids to problem-solve with their whole bodies, not just sit still and comply. It supports regulation in a way that feels natural because it is.
But Charlie didn’t need a tighter box. He needed a better environment.
A Message to Parents
If you’re in that season right now, I want you to hear this: You’re not failing. Your child isn’t broken. And there is a path forward. One that can feel calmer, more connected, and more hopeful than it feels today.
Thank you for reading my story. Wishing you peace and comfort today and always.
Warmly,
Kim DeLaura, MS, OTR/L
