My little boy is 3years 4months. When I was pregnant I found out he had multiple heart defects which would require intervention from a very early age pretty much within the first few days of life. So at birth my baby was rushed to NICU, then transferred to another hospital a few hours later. He had his first open heart surgery at 2 weeks old which lasted 15 hours. We got to go home 5 weeks post op but we’re admitted again 2 weeks later as he had an infection in his wound, this required a wound debribment and put him back in ICU. We got to go home again 1 week later and told he needed more surgery on his heart. This was done at 3 months old, when he woke up 5 days post op, he began having seizures, he had 6 seizures in 12 hours and was put on epilepsy medicine and sent for a brain scan as with open heart surgery there is a risk of a stroke. The scan was clear and my little boy was kept on the medicine for 1 year. He has not had any seizures since. I began to worry about his development around his 1st birthday. He was still not sitting up or standing but it was put down to him having long hospital stays. Also my little boy did not talk at all yet. I told my health visitor but she said we would wait until he was 2 years old before becoming too worried...... just after his 2nd birthday my little boy had his 3rd open heart surgery, this was reasonably well and should be the last for quite a long time now. After the surgery was over and he recovered we were sent for a hearing test. He did not get one at birth like most babies do as he was in NICU, then moved to another hospital awaiting surgery. He failed the hearing test. It was repeated and he failed again. Grommets were inserted and he began to look for sounds more and would often respond to his name but does still not follow any Instructions at all. He can now say a few words like choo choo, ball and juice. He is not toilet trained and often doesn’t sleep, he has done a range of dangerous things like tired to roll down the stairs, he often strips his bed then sleeps on the floor, he screams when it’s bath time and goes hysterical during the whole thing. I put him into a nursery and they have told me they are concerned about him as he doesn’t play with any of the children, or any of the toys and only likes the baby toys where he can push buttons on them. He likes to line up the dinosaurs on top of the book shelf. So I went to see my GP and told them I was worried he still wasn’t really talking and my GP sent in a referral to The hospital so my appointment was meant to be last month, instead of it being an appointment at the hospital it was turned into a phone appointment because of the lockdown rules. I spent around 1hour 30mins on the phone to the doctor who specialises in Pediatrics and child development. After all I said which is pretty much all above, she told me this sounds like autism and she would place my child on the spectrum. She has made some referrals for other testing to check his DNA but is quite sure it’s autism and wants to see him at the end of the year. I suppose I feel a bit down about it and that he can’t be seen and get a certain diagnosis at the moment so I’m left wondering if she’s right or wrong and I’m sat looking for things that would indicate it’s not autism and it’s just a phase he will grow out of and it’s a delay because of all his hospital stays. I looked through my pictures of my little boy and the last time he smiled at me was around the time he had his first birthday. Now he no longer looks at me or smiles. He laughs if I tickle him and he likes to play rough and be swung around. Can autism really be diagnosed over the phone like that?