u/ansterthemonster

I developed oromandibular dystonia during pregnancy about 2 years ago although it was only diagnosed a year ago when I was finally referred to the right doctor. My symptoms have continued after giving birth and gotten worse leading to long periods of extremely painful spasms of my jaw and tongue. During my spasms, my jaw deviates and I am unable to voluntarily move my jaw/mouth and I struggle to keep my tongue in my mouth and avoid biting on my tongue. I have been doing botox injections with a neurologist for a few months and seen some improvement but I am still having to take muscle relaxants twice a day to prevent spasms. I want to have another child and so it is important to me that I stop taking the muscle relaxants as there is little to no evidence of the safety of taking them during pregnancy. I have tried physical therapy and most of what I was taught was just stretching. I am interested in learning if there are any other lifestyle changes anyone has seen to have been helpful or any "tricks" to alleviating symptoms (for instance, I have found that trying to drink through a straw when I am having tongue spasms will stop them for a few seconds although it is not long-lasting relief). I know that nobody can give me any medical advice, but I am looking for any tips anyone can give me who may have a similar experience including anything you've found to help prevent or stop spasms.

I have a 17 month old and I took her to story time at the library today for 0-2 year-olds. She was all over the place and could not sit still. To be fair, at home she does go from one activity to the next pretty rapidly or we just walk through the house exploring the environment and I thought that was normal. But at the story time today, she was the only kid who wasn't engaging in some way with the tasks provided and instead was just walking around the room, walking up to the story teller, picking up things she shouldn't, and any time I tried to redirect her she would have a mini meltdown. I felt judged by the other moms and left feeling embarrassed like she had misbehaved... but she's a toddler, right?

During her nap, I started to think about how we spend our days... She loves to play with books, but she isn't always interested in me reading to her and prefers to flip through the books herself. We play with her kitchen set but she mostly just likes moving the food around into different compartments. I try to work on animal sounds and body parts with her, but she's not always in the mood to listen. She's getting pickier with food and now won't sit in the high chair without throwing a fit and wants to walk around and eat or be up in her toddler tower. She has a water table outside that we play with frequently. When we are getting frustrated at home, I do get us out of the house and we take trips to the zoo, the park, or go for stroller walks with the dog. She is always happiest when we are on the move in some way.

But the thing I'm now worried about is screen time. I hadn't really thought about what that might be doing to her until after story time today and I was googling about attention issues with toddlers and saw that it's recommended that kids don't get any screen time until at least 2. She usually gets between 30 min - 1 hour a day (not all at once, but if I need to get something done quickly and need her occupied, occasionally if we are out to eat and she is on the verge of a meltdown but we can't leave yet, and sometimes to wind down as a family after bath and before bedtime - although we still read every night before bed... or at least try). I restrict screen time to a few shows (Ms Rachel, Mr Roger's Neighborhood, Daniel Tiger, Sesame Street, Bluey- nothing too over stimulating). On rare occasions, we have watched a movie but never the whole thing at once.

And then there is her sleep schedule. I let her usually sleep as long as she wants which can sometimes be 9am. I try to always do a nap sometime between 12-3. Sometimes she naps for an hour, sometimes 2, sometimes the entire 3 hours. At night, she goes to bed around 7-7:30pm. She has been taking longer to get to sleep though and has been waking up and playing in her crib at night/very early in the morning. I googled today about this too and realized that she is sleeping way too much and waking up in the middle of the night to play for a while is not normal.

So, my question is, have I severely messed up? How do I move on from here? Should I cut out screen time altogether? How fast do I change her sleep schedule to be more appropriate for her age? I feel like such a bad mom.

I have been dealing with oromandibular dystonia since I was about 20 weeks pregnant (constant vomiting/dry heaving was what triggered it). I was having painful and debilitating spasm attacks of my jaw and tongue that would last hours and would happen around twice a week. It was so painful that I would feel like I was completely unable to care for my child or care for myself. One time after spasming for hours with pain ranging from a 6-8/10 I started to feel suicidal. Even when I wasn't actively spasming, I could barely chew or open my mouth. I went to the emergency room several times.

This has been a long road with numerous ER visits and referrals before doctors knew what was happening and before I was finally referred to a neurologist. I did PT throughout the second half of my pregnancy and then for my first few months pp. I was first sent to my dentist for an expensive mouthguard which did nothing. I've been on muscle relaxers since I gave up breastfeeding at 6 months pp and have now had 4 botox treatments. Currently, my spasm attacks are infrequent (right now sitting at 1-2 a month) but I am still taking muscle relaxants albeit less frequently.

My daughter is now 16 months old and I'm wanting to start trying for a second child. This is 100% what I want but I'm scared for a lot of reasons. I'm scared of having hyperemesis again, getting worse, not being able to take muscle relaxants anymore (I'm not willing to take the risk during pregnancy). I am still going to continue the botox treatments as my doctor has told me it is safe and I do think they are helping. I'm also considering trying dry needling.

I feel like I've tried everything, but I just found this subreddit and thought it couldn't hurt to see if anyone has had a similar experience.

My two cats (16 yo FS DSH and 9 yo MN DSH) lived with dogs for the entire time they've been with us (14 years for the girl and 7 years for the boy). A month and a half ago we had to euthanize our 16 year old chow/border Collie mix which left us dog less for a while until we found the right time/right dog to join our family.

We had brought one of our cats (the boy) to the shelter two days before the adoption for a controlled meet which went as well as could be expected - my cat went looking for places to hide, but the dog showed mild curiosity and gave him space. We just wanted to make sure he wouldn't chase or act aggressively.

We brought home our new dog (2.5 year old MN shepherd mix) yesterday afternoon and our cats (instigated by the male) attacked him. The dog just pancaked to the ground as we removed the cats. For the remainder of the night, we kept our cats in our guest room with water and a litter box and fed them in there too. When we went to bed, we closed our bedroom door with the dog inside and let the cats have the house. I put them back in the spare room yesterday morning and around noon I let them have the house and spent some time on our front porch with the dog. I thought maybe I could let them smell him from the other side of our screen door. They hissed and swatted at him from the other side of the door while he remained calm and a little afraid of them. I returned the cats to the spare room and followed the same pattern last night giving them the house. This morning, I tested them out with him and they didn't attack, but hissed and swatted in his direction (he avoided them). So back into the spare room they went. This time I took off our bedsheet (he has now slept 2 nights at the foot of our bed on the sheet) and put it in the room with them. At noon again we went to the porch and I let the cats out into the rest of the house. Through the screen door our female cat and the dog sniffed each other, but the male cat hung back and hissed.

This is our first experience introducing a new dog. The cats joined our family after the dogs so the dynamic was different. Does anyone have any experience with dog/cat introductions? I don't need them to be best friends but I need the cats to stop trying to attack our poor new friend. I just want to make sure we are going about this the right way.