DD is nearly one, and since DH was diagnosed as an adult a few months ago I’ve gone into a rabbit hole around early signs of autism.
When DH received his diagnosis our GP did say they’d let our HV know as there can be a genetic element and they would therefore send out some support and guidance on things to monitor in DD between her 1-2 year checks. As they’d not be able to diagnose or do anything until then.
I didn’t think much of it until she recently started moving her fingers strangely, googling it, it looks like stimming, then she started squinting a bit more than normal - so of course I did the stupid thing of googling that as well.
It has got to the point where it’s consuming me. Although DH scored pretty high in the testing, he is minimally impacted by his ASD, holds down a good job, and although you can tell there are ‘issues’ in terms of large social situations etc. is pretty ok in all other areas (if you didn’t know he had ASD you’d probably just assume anxiety)
My younger brother however is the opposite end of the spectrum, very severely impacted and still needs care at 27 years old.
Growing up seeing how my brother struggled it really is worrying me. And I don’t know whether it’s normal to worry about this or not as she is our first baby (and likely our last too - as if she does have ASD I could never bring another child into the mix based on how badly my brothers diagnosis impacted me growing up)