is my baby at risk of autism? what can i do?

[sleepysosleepy]

hello,

i am a little concerned about my baby.

he was diagnosed in utero as having ventriculomegaly and agenesis of the corpus callosum. at the time i looked into it and found that these things are associated with an increased risk of autism among other developmental problems.

anyway, baby was born at term, he was IUGR due to my pre-eclampsia, spent a little time in the NICU (antibiotics as a precaution etc etc), gave him his immunisations on schedule and all seems ok with his development so far - some things he's doing early, other things he's not quite got the hang of yet but still well within normal range.

anyway, yesterday hv measured his head circumference - it has gone from being on the 0.4th centile at birth to jumping through the centile lines and is now 50th centile at 7 months.

obviously i'm a bit concerned by this - i know rapid head growth has been linked to autism. obviously there's also the concern that the fluid in the ventricles could be increasing again too. on the other hand, i have no idea if this is the normal pattern of growth for an IUGR baby's head? his body and length moved up to the 2nd centile at about 4 weeks and have been tracking the line exactly ever since.

they are just going to monitor us for a little while longer to check his head growth but i was wondering if anyone had any advice about anything practical i could do in the mean time, just in case? i've heard early intervention in children suspected to have autism can be really effective. just wondering if there was anything i could do in terms of play time etc? i'm thinking it can't hurt to try and do the early intervention stuff myself (if that's possible) rather than waiting to see what the professionals say. just in case.

if there is anyone out there with similar experience i would love to talk about it

At this point there is not much you can do. I have 2 dd's with ASD, dd2 did not show any signs of having Autism until she was almost 2 years old and most children are not diagnossed until a lot latter. I know its hard not to worry but you have a lovely little baby boy, enjoy your baby and try to relax, what will be will be and chances are your little boy will be fine.

both my DDs have ASD, and both were small at birth and i suffered placental failure in both. They both developed the very late side of normal but tbh the signs of ASD were there from the begining but we didnt see them with DD1 and did in DD2 because we knew what to look for. There isnt a huge amount you could do at this stage, as far as i am aware but someone better might be along shortly.

I think it is too early to say, but the things you can do include getting him to interract with you, make eye contact, babble at him, teach him to sort of look at you and then give him a reward (eg milk?) when he does so. It may be that he is fine, but I am a big believer in the plasticity of the brain theory - whereby you can actually change brain chemistry (to an extent) through early intervention and interraction. The two things I would work on developing in my autistic boy,if I had known then what I know now, would be imitation and speech sounds. So - not yet, but maybe a little later - get him to copy gestures, then eventually sounds, then eventually words. FWIW, both my kids have very large heads - one is autistic and one isn't, so I don't think that alone can tell you much.

Hi sleepysosleepy

You could have a look at a couple of online PubMed research papers collections
Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum and Autism which may provide some useful information

are you anywhere near a surestart or children's centre - sometimes they run courses aimed at parents of young children who may be at risk of speech/language delay - I went on one called You make the difference - which was v good, I didn't need any diagnosis for my DS to go on it, just asked and it was straightforward. agree with sickofsocalled experts about working on communication with him, as it's never going to go to waste even if the extra work wasn't needed. if he's OK at imitating you could do a bit of baby signing with him - like the sing and sign dvds or just watching something special on cbeebies.

useful books and websites re:speech/language development

www.ican.org.uk
www.afasic.org.uk
www.hanen.org.uk
www.teachmetotalk.com

Baby Talk by Sally Ward
You make the Difference by Ayola Manolson