A lot of people have asked if my husband and I knew that Alex had autism when we decided to have another baby. We've been judged for making the decision to have another knowing that our children are at an increased risk of being affected by autism. This is a criticism I've encountered more inside the autism world by other special needs parents, than outside. It's disappointing to me that parents who likely feel the claws of criticism more than the average, feel the need to judge other parents who've made a different decision than they would.
The answer is, Yes; my husband and I were fully aware that our son had autism when we decided to have another baby, and Yes; we knew that our subsequent children were at an increased risk for having autism. We didn't take the decision lightly at all. We had been close to ready to have another baby way back when we realized Alex was showing clear signs of a developmental delay. We put everything on hold until we had a better handle on how to help our little guy. Then we agonized and agonized over the decision to give Alex a little brother or sister. Eventually, we decided that 1) if the child had a 10% chance of having autism (versus the general population's chance of 1%,) that was still a 90% chance that he or she would not have autism. 2) Alex would really benefit in the long run from a sibling for many reasons. 3) If the child did end up having autism, we would be better equipped to catch it early and intervene even earlier this time.
That all being said, now I have a beautiful 10-month-old daughter who I'm just not the least bit worried about. At this point, I'm convinced that Amelia is a "typically developing" child and will not go on to regress into autism. Comparing my children to each other is not my favorite thing to do, but I can't help but think about where Alex was at this age. Technically, Alex met his milestones on time up until about 18 - 24 months old. Amelia is doing the same, but there is such a clear difference between her and her brother. Every child is different but I firmly believe now that if Amelia had been my first and Alex had been my second, I would have caught the differences earlier. Amelia is a social creature. She loves people and is always trying to share interest and enjoyment with others. She waves and points, looks at us for feedback when she's curious or nervous about something, and is even starting to say some meaningful words at 10 months old. She'll say "ba" when she sees a ball "cat" when she sees a cat and "doggie" when she sees a dog. Alex had some words by 12 months, but it wasn't the same. His words were not attached to objects; they were mimicked words that had no actual meaning to him.
That brings me to another topic that's been on my mind lately, and which really deserves its own post. I just want to mention the whole "born with it" versus regression debate. So many parents report that they see a real regression shortly after their children received certain immunizations. There's always a huge debate over the topic because parents, who know their children better than anyone, swear that their child's behavior changed after receiving immunizations. I believe that they know what they are talking about. My experience has been that sometimes, no matter how well you try to explain your child's behavior to someone else, no one can quite understand it the way you do as the parent. I hate to see this debate dismissed by the experts. Supposedly, studies have been done which show no connection between autism and immunizations. What if certain children are more susceptible? I'm saying that because I don't believe that there is one clear cause of autism, immunizations or otherwise.
I can say that, looking back, I believe that Alex had autism at birth, or shortly thereafter. Now that I can look back and compare his babyhood to Amelia's, there are many subtle differences. Just the fact that from birth, Alex liked to watch spinning things (which is now an obsession of his) tells me that his autism didn't appear out of nowhere. He always seemed to fall outside the norm just a little but I never put it all together until later. Alex was a constantly fussy baby who never slept well and so friends would tell us "just take him for a ride in the car!" Haven't we all heard story after story of parents who would drive around the block to get their baby to sleep? Well, Alex would have nothing to do with that. That poor baby would cry and scream as soon as the car started moving straight until it stopped and we took him out of the car seat. Taking him anywhere in the car until he was over a year old was torture for everyone involved. There are a lot of little things like that - people would give us advice and it always seemed like I was thinking to myself, as I still do today, "Yeah, that doesn't apply to us."
To sum it up, I've really come full circle in my perspective on the causes of autism. This is partly why I want to talk to other parents; I'd love to learn of many others' experience with this. When Alex was first diagnosed, I wasn't aware and/or ready to admit that signs of his autism were present very early on. Therefore, I've gone from thinking that there must have been some environmental influence that caused him to regress somewhere in his second year of life, to thinking that if there was an environmental influence, it most likely happened in-utero and had already begun to affect his brain before he was born.
