I have a nearly 3 year old with a speech delay, for which he has private speech therapy as we are waiting on the NHS list. It seems very likely he has dyspraxia, but he might have autism too but this is less clear.
A month ago, we had an appointment with the community paediatrician. He referred us for an ASD assessment as well as an absolute tonne of blood tests including genetics, nutrition, heavy metals, loads of stuff.
I have just received the report and blood test forms in the post. Firstly, it seems clear to me that the paediatrician has heavily over-egged things in the report. Just picking one example, he he has written that my son doesn’t share interest and does not bring toys to show us, which isn’t true - he does both those things often, and I said as much.
I suspect the paediatrician has exaggerated in order to get us a referral, which I am hugely grateful for if true. But I am also alarmed by the amount of blood work he will need - it seems like it will be at least 4 vials judging from the paper work?
What concerns me is that my son is massively afraid of the doctors, and has been ever since his 12 month blood tests. Nobody believes me when I say this, but I truly think that by 2 years old he’d learnt to recognise the NHS blue signs as he’d get hysterical when we pulled into car parks for medical things at buildings/locations that we’d never even once been to before. He never ever usually does this, he’s a relatively chilled-out character otherwise, and I can only put it down to seeing the NHS signs as we pull into the car park!!
He’s a big boy, he has always been well above the 99th percentile. He’s very strong. At 13 months old, he had to go to A&E for something unrelated to this and he totally freaked out, and would not allow the doctor to do general observations like temperature, heart rate, all that stuff.
In the end we had me lying on a hospital bed with my 13 month old son on top of me, my husband helping to hold him down, and the doctor helping to hold him down, and she still couldn’t actually complete her observations. I am honestly not exaggerating, it was totally impossible to keep him still enough.
How on earth are they going to be able to take that much blood from him? I’m worried firstly that it will cause him to fear the doctors even more, especially as over the past 12 months we’ve made some small progress with his fear. Secondly I’m really worried he will be injured in the attempt to take blood from him.
I suppose I’m also thinking that it’s a lot to put him through for the sake of him displaying dyspraxic symptoms as well as some potentially autistic traits which basically amount to being slightly more difficult to direct than other toddlers - I’m not trying to downplay it, I do think there’s a real potential it may be autism, but I also am realistic that he’s not IMPOSSIBLE to direct, he’s just a bit more wilful and single-minded than your average toddler.
I’m going to ring the number on the letter on Monday to talk about it, but I’m just wondering if mumsnet has any wisdom!