Anyone who starts down the parenthood or caregiving journey knows it won’t be easy. You start with optimism, but no clear path and no way to know what’s ahead.
With more than 8 billion people in the world, and literally millions of examples to draw from about how to be a parent, it’s not that you need any kind of guarantee exactly, but you do take a certain leap of faith, with pretty strong confidence that it will turn out ok for you too.
Katie and I both took that leap- our kids are 9 and 7, and 7 and 4 respectively. Katie and I became “boy moms” the same year, just 2 months apart, and we’ve been friends since middle school. We went to high school together, took separate paths to college and graduate school, and both ended up back in Minnesota where we were born and raised and where we are raising our families.
While the story of our friendship starts when we were both wearing braces, going to school dances and sitting on the student council, our story of our company began during a long car ride. We left our husbands with the kids, and drove from Minnesota to Madison Wisconsin, so that we could attend a Coldplay concert (no, not that Coldplay concert), we had hours to fill and lots to catch up on.
Katie, Anne and Andrea on the road from Minneapolis to Madison for the Coldplay concert.
I spent a pretty good portion of the car ride complaining about all of the paperwork I was neglecting while on the trip. Once I was home, I’d have to fill out more insurance forms, collect documentation on our son’s diagnosis, hunt down different forms and evaluations that he had been through over the years to first diagnose him, and then to officially certify him as disabled with the social security office.
Doing so would require hours of filling out forms, and gathering paperwork across portals, emails, and folders. Paperwork that had been scanned and mailed and faxed and downloaded. Paperwork was everywhere.
While paperwork is no one’s favorite task, it was particularly painful to fill out this paperwork. The questions were not just tedious, this particular form had over 80 pages of check boxes, scales, and manual entries, and included questions like, when did your child eat their first solid food? When did they take their first step? When did he say his first word or make his first friend? And had occurred so long ago that my working memory had long since forgotten the details.
These questions are painful not just because they are tedious. These questions are painful because my child is non-speaking. He’s never said his first word, nor his first sentence.
Like every mom, I’waited years to hear the first “mama”. After pregnancy, the late nights, the breastfeeding, and then hearing “dada” with my daughter as her first ever word, I had longed to hear my son say his first word. I had coached him in a way that you might expect of someone who was competitive. “Ma - ma”, “maaa- maaa”. Over and over. And over and over. But the words never came. The words never would.
And so that’s how I found myself spending my nights and weekends. Filling out paperwork. Calling providers. Running to appointments. Googling, googling, googling. Waiting for answers. Realizing no one had any. And no one ever really would.
But the forms were mandatory.
If you needed a service there was a form to go with it. I filled out so many forms to get the services and the care that our son needed. Occupational therapy. Speech therapy. Play therapy. Vision therapy. Every provider had their own form. No two were the same. “When did your child say the first word?” was on the first form, while “At what age did your child speak?” was on the second.
It was painful to answer, and painful to relive. It was even more painful that by the time we saw a provider, they usually asked some form of the same question, “So, what brings you here today?” when we arrived to the office. Did they even need the form I had so painstakingly filled out?
Those forms took an emotional toll on me. But I had never talked about it. So, when I got some time with friends who knew me well and saw my journey, there was finally time and space to talk about what we were going through. I shared how detailing my son’s challenges changed what I thought of him- seeing all of his deficits on paper can fool you into thinking makes you believe that your child is only deficits, and that wasn’t a place I wanted to devote any more time to thinking about.
Instead, I want to live in Henry’s joy. Henry is a joyful person- quick to smile, as easy going as they come, and a pleasure to be around. While he can’t speak, he can laugh, and he does a LOT of it. That’s where I wanted to spend my time. In his laughter.
Why isn’t any form the same? Why do I have to keep entering this stuff out? Why doesn’t anyone even read it? And the question I didn’t ask out loud. Why is there no one to help me?
Katie got it. Mom friends get it. Katie was in the same boat. As the mom of a son recently diagnosed with ADHD, Katie was in the paperwork weeds too. Figuring it out. Trying to make a plan for one child while not letting any other plates in her family drop.
What if there was a way to save every form you ever filled out? What if a safe place remembered for you, and was there with you on the journey? To lift your burden just a little?
And that’s where Wyth was born.
Katie and I are moms who get it. We’ve been there in the weeds. We know what it looks like to want the very best for your child, and also know that a lot of times it feels out of reach, or at least, you have to cross a lot of barriers to reach.
We built Wyth out of a deep sense to ease the challenges of caregiving. To give parents and caregivers time back at night to rest instead of filling out forms. To make the leadership meeting instead of filling out the dreaded 10 am on a Tuesday camp sign-up in January for a week of camp that won’t take place until June.
We’re here to start a conversation about what it means to be a caregiver. To see your whole life and everything you care about in one place- easy to access and easy to manage. We know that by default it’s not. We’re here to make it a little easier to care. We are so glad that you are here with us on the journey.
