AIBU? Baby Boy- Autism.

[MumofHennHals]

Please do not judge me, I suffer with health anxiety ever since I gave birth to my boy prematurely, I worry about him hugely. I'm seeking medical advice / treatment for this so I don't need to be told to 'seek help' - it's just some advice / reassurance is nice sometimes- so thank you in advance to anyone who helps.

He was born at 34 weeks, 10 months ago. However for his milestones and other things we have to go by his 'corrected due date age' which makes him 8.5 months..

He is a happy little boy which is all that matters to me, but as a mummy I want the best support & best life for my son as I can possibly give him.

My husband thinks I'm being unreasonable worrying about him because he is so young still and I do get that, but as a mum I just want to be aware.

The things I'm worried about are that he cannot yet:

• Imitate sounds or actions- for example, he won't say Dadadadada back to me even though he makes that sound already by himself & he won't copy me when I clap although he can clap and locate both hands together - instead both of these things will engage him, he will make eye contact and he will smile and laugh at me instead.

• He doesn't yet point. (but I'm not sure if that's expected at 8.5 months- Google is very much contradicting depending on where you live )

• He doesn't yet wave. ( but in all honesty, I don't think he has been waved at by many people regularly enough - I'll start doing this in and around the house more when I enter and leave rooms )

• Put arms up to be carried. ( again, not sure when this usually comes into play- but if he's crying I'll put my arms out to him and he will put his arms out wide which I've taken as a 'yes please' )

• Respond to his name, which is very hit and miss- sometimes he will look directly at me and sometimes he won't; I've noticed the won't comes more with the fact he is playing or something else has hold of his attention.

• won't hold his own milk bottle, prefers to be cuddles and being fed.

• Hates baby led weaning food, will play all day long with the textures in his hands happily but struggles to chew it- but is great with any flavour puree, his favourite is a rather strong garlic cheesy spread on his melty sticks ( which he feeds himself )

Things he does do;

• If we are in eye contact he will smile back to me if I smile or giggle at him.

• He crawls, climbs & walks along the furniture - the stair gates are already firmly up.

• he babbles, lots of Dadadadada, Dodododo, BAbabababa, and raspberries- albeit less than what my 4 year old daughter did at his age; but she is a major chatterbox.

• He will crawl over and climb up to me.

• He will follow you around the room with his eyes if you have his attention.

• He crawls over to the end of the cot when my daughter comes in the room every morning and will stand up and babble away to her.

• He will play peekaboo, if I'm covering my eyes he will remove my hands for my eyes and really giggle at me.

• he will make and maintain eye contact during a bottle feed.

• He sleeps really well, never has an issue self settling and sleeps through the night and has naps!

• He loves someone in the same room as him, if we leave he notices and gets upset and he will always notice if you enter the room if you've not been in it.

There's so many factors where he is sociable and loves social interaction, but a few of the 'Hit and misses' with the name responding, the not copying his words or clapping etc... it's making me worry, or is it still quite young? - he had an ear infection recently, he's got a follow up tomorrow- but it seems to have definitely improved and his hearing has been fine besides that 5 days 2 weeks ago.

Am I being unreasonable to the situation and myself for worrying so early on? Is there a chance he is still on track to being neurotypical?

Hopefully not liking posting twenty pound notes through the floor boards though...

So not true!

Look, I worried about my son too. It ruined my first year with him. As it turns out, he is autistic. And you know what? He's brilliant and doing brilliantly and I am so proud of him. I couldn't change anything by worrying so I regret that time wasted. Also, Autism isn't the end of the world that I envisaged. Turns out I'm autistic too, and my second son probably is as well. Not an issue - we are all so happy. My advice is stop worrying - see how things go - and accept that whoever your son is is fine. X

She finds her dad’s wallet and helps herself to any cash she finds in it. I feel quite smug for never having cash myself.

DS hit all of these milestones on time or early and still got an early diagnosis of autism.

To be quite honest with you OP a diagnosis is neither here nor there at this age. What you should focus on is if he isn't hitting his milestones, what sort of early intervention is available to you in your area. Autism or not if a child isn't hitting their milestones based off of their due date if they were early, then early intervention is better than waiting to see.

I really don't like the young baby signs to watch out for for autism because many autistic children will hit these milestones and then have a significant regression while some never meet them at all, and some are just delayed but grow up perfectly fine so it's all a red herring, perfectly normal baby behaviour that in itself isn't indicative of a diagnosis.

Oh here we go with the unqualified autism statements.

My DS is 5 now and at a fully specialist school for non verbal autism. He did both of these things.

@MumofHennHals

This is a bit of a tangent but bear with me. When I thought I was having a miscarriage when I was 7 weeks pregnant (turned out to be a healthy baby!), I spent HOURS on mumsnet googling similar threads with symptoms, posted my own threads and looked elsewhere online. It consumed me. I didn't realise until later that all of this knowledge and research would have made zero impact on the outcome and it was all so pointless.

This reminds me of this thread and the fact you've asked this before. You simply cannot definitively know at this point, so this worrying and questioning is pointless at this point in time. Knowledge at this point will not change the outcome, but what it will do it ruin your early memories with your little baby. Perhaps in a years time you will get more answers.

I feel for you but please do listen to some of the fantastic advice on this thread and try not to worry about this yet.

Some babies with these characteristics will end up with autism, and some won't - you cannot know for sure and what are you going to do with the answer anyway? You'll treat him exactly the same regardless xx

This!

Kindly OP, you need to get back to work. You have way too much time on your hands and are analysing a healthy, but still very young child who sounds like he is developing at his own pace. There is likely nothing wrong with him. Let him mature and grow in his own time.

He's too young to really have any idea OP, but nothing sounds like terrible red flags there. Mine has ASD and wasn't diagnosed till secondary school age, it wasn't picked up at all by anyone till that point. No one ever suggested it. Just enjoy him OP, even if he is autistic it doesn't mean he can't have a really good like. Mine is a young adult and really enjoying his degree/work.

Tell that to my class of ASD learners. Two of them enjoy nothing more than eye contact

❤️ when they enjoy it, it's just absolute in the moment joy and connection isn't it

Congratulations on getting yourself help, OP. I hope you're able to see benefits soon. If you aren't already, there's no harm or shame in having medication to help you.

Your little one sounds perfectly normal in as much as there isn't really one for babies, they are all so different. I was a super early talker & my sister so late she had speech therapy, she is the one that copes with ordinary life stuff & I'm the one that absolutely doesn't.

My 3 sons - 2 talked early, one later. Later one & an early one both autistic.

My grandson is 18 months & doesn't really do words but can sort fiddly small toys correctly, first time, without ever being shown how.

No point in looking for patterns now, you won't see them.

Remind yourself that these are intrusive thoughts & best of luck with your therapy xx

I am really surprised children of posters here have been given a diagnosed despite being very sociable.
part of my diagnoses report showed that I was diagnosed partly because I would not reciprocate, I was withdrawn and would not socialise.i didn’t use eye contact. These symptoms were present from birth throughout childhood. I didn’t have them and then not have them or only have them sometimes. I consistently had the symptoms.
I thought a major part of autism was communication difficulties and no eye contact.

Your symptoms can indicate autism, but autism can (and mostly does) exist without those symptoms.

I spent my entire career in special ed, mostly teaching autistic children. Of all the children I taught, hardly any had issues with meeting eye contact. It was actually more common for their eye contact to be over intense. In their bid to communicate, some of them would stare into my eyes without blinking.

Yep - this is what my son does. Eye contact is not an issue for him... but the staring freaks people out a bit! My son doesn't show the 'classic' obvious signs of autism apart from hand flapping / stimming. Also, you can still be sociable but have social-communication difficulties... I am/do!

I think your baby sounds normal. Honesty you cannot focus on milestones and every baby is so so different

My child has communication difficulties - he finds using or reading and comprehending descriptive language difficult, he’s very literal, struggles with sarcasm or jokes, doesn’t read body language well, has a faulty “filter” for what might be socially inappropriate to say and has a tendency to monologue at people about his special interests. And he’s an introvert who needs a lot of time by himself doing his own thing. None of that means he isn’t sociable though - he wants and has friends and enjoys their company. He’s had to be taught much more explicitly than my NT child how to be a good friend and he was probably later than his peers to grasp how to make friends or play together, but he’s always been sociable and is now quite popular with his peers. Not “life and soul of the party”, but enough to have a circle of half a dozen good friends he sees often, both ND and NT.

The fact that someone can’t make eye contact, isn’t sociable etc might point towards considering if that person might be autistic. But the absence of those particular traits doesn’t mean someone isn’t autistic.

@MumofHennHals bluntly but kindly... If your son is autistic, there's nothing you can do about it.

Please seek some support for your anxiety, your baby will only be small for such a tiny amount of time, please get some support so you can enjoy this time instead of worrying 💙

As long as your symptoms meet the triad of impairments which does include social impairment however can present differently in many ways, such as monotonous speech or irregular speech patterns, not reciprocating in conversations when the topic isn't of any interest etc, and has been present throughout childhood then a diagnosis can be made.

I'm autistic and extremely sociable I could talk for hours about my interests but I struggle with unscripted questions and answers. It's why I thrived in a call centre in terms of doing the job because it was largely scripted but I could handle the changes in meetings times, being kept behind, people coming to ask for favours or ask me questions while I was in the middle of doing tasks, it taking me a really long time to get used to new ways of doing things and it causing me a lot of stress. I still maintained eye contact, and spoke, and that's why it took so long to get a diagnosis because it was terribly misunderstood when I was a child even though I have always been this way.

He's far too young to be able to tell. Babies reach milestones at different rates and normal is a big range. It's too early to worry.

It’s the OP who needs to calm down posting multiple threads in one week about how her perfectly normal 10 month old baby has autism.

You don’t know much about autism.

@MumCanIHaveASnackPlease

I agree but your tone and attitude are not helpful. You're adding nothing and merely sticking the boot in, and I imagine quite enjoying it.

My son did both of these and is autistic. Now he's older he dislikes eye contact but had no problem making it when younger. He also scored very low on the mCHAT test for autism at 18 months.Still autistic.

OP nothing you write sounds concerning, your baby is too young to be doing half the things you mention, but ultimately you're just going to have to wait and see.