Early signs for autism?

[Paribus]

I started a thread a while ago about my daughter's dyspraxia/speech and language disorder and got so many helpful advices and words if encouragement so decided to ask you all about early signs for autism.
Could you please tell me how your DC were as babies? We have a newborn DS and I am starting to be concerned about him- I know, my DD's dx (or rather lack of it) plays some part in my anxiety, but I would so appreciate your input.

IndigoBell, thank you. He might have had delayed visual maturation- they normally grow out of it by 6 months.
Raffle, thank you. It is hard, you are right.
Lisad123, thank you. I didn't know that hands wringing can be a sign of anything!

Spiraling, thank you. Very, very interesting links, will study them in depth over the weekend.
LeonieDelt, thank you. Our DS looks at people but other things like curtains, bookshelves with colourful things on them intrigue him a lot.

Paribus - DS didn't have delayed visual maturation. I forgot to say that he was vaccine damaged. At his 6 week check up his vision was fine.

Then the day after his 3 month vaccination he went blind and developed nystagmus.

Then by 12 months his vision seemed more or less fine, but he still has very mild nystagmus. (And visual perception problems)

That is why his dx was 'undiagnosed' instead of 'delayed visual maturation'

DD (3.7) still has no dx but it seems she will end up with an ads dx.

as a baby she was awfully hard work. crying and clingy from the day she was born. constantly breastfeeding, latching on, latching off, latching on, latching off... extremely irritable. awful sleeper. constantly waking up at night and not sleeping a lot during the day either. she also has some strange fascinations with lights and had used to have some strange hand movements.
other than that she was a happy baby. good eye contact, smiling, cooing, babbling quite early on... we only started to suspect something was really up when she was 17/18 month and did not develop language as expected...

we now have also DC2 (almost 1). DC2 is just so different and I think if I had had them in reverse order, my alarm bells re DD would have gone off much earlier.

My DS is 7 and has a dx of ASD. He was a happy good baby and although he did most of the things like crawling, babbling on time etc he did not clap hands, point or wave bye bye. He was my first so I didn't really think too much of it and its only much later that I found that this could be a sign of ASD. When he was about 18 months old his speech had not developed, he loved spinning around and he used to carry a piece of lego around with him and then I felt something wasn't right. By comparison my DD who is NT was very different, talking very early, very sociable and if she'd been born first I think I'd have seen it in my DS sooner.

Hi, I'm over on another thread at the moment, wondering whether DS1 has Aspergers and thinking about going for assessment, so I'm hardly an expert!!! However, I thought it worth mentioning that the thing that finally convinced me that DS might well have Aspergers was this. The description of ASD children from birth was just spookily identical to our experience with DS. Have a read for yourself, but in a nutshell he was: 1) unbelivably 'colicky' (we saw loads of professionals, none of whom really believed us, I don't think, or took us seriously - but honestly, he basically screamed hysterically every waking hour for 3 months); 2) the only things that soothed him were listening to white noise and being held completely upright; 3) he developed extreme separation anxiety which lasted about 2 years; 4) his first word was at 12 months but was 'moon' rather than mummy, daddy, dog etc. A bit later, we also noticed that, although he smiled and made reasonable eye contact (with us), he would never wave. Anyway, as a parent of a DD with a dx you know far more about this stuff than I do, but I thought that link might be helpful.

Sorry to be late on this thread, but i found this pdf more by accident than design. I had located the research paper abstract some time ago, but it had a pay barrier to read the important detail. This week online bookmarking service wa sold and the new owners have made a mess of things so i am having to crosscheck all of my old bookmarks and even find a few dead links. I was aware of this thread, tried to locate a free access pdf of this research paper and bingo so hear it is.
Early Identification of Autism: How Early Can We Go?
it took me an hour to read through it, so you may need print it off and

Hi All on this thread

Above is an example of what can happen when my coping strategies desert me.
In this particular instance i did not give myself enough time to switch from my reading coping strategies to my writing/typing coping strategies. So for the non-dyslexics i will re-type it hopefully with fewer APD errors lol

Sorry to be late on this thread, but i have only just found this pdf file, which is full copy of a research paper i had found abstract (summary) for sometime ago. Unfortunately the research journal had a pay barrier which prevents free access to the detail in the complete research paper.
This week the online bookmarking facility i have been using for a couple of years now, was sold and the new owners only want to provide a very basic service, so like many others I have had to move to another online book marking facility crosscheck all of my links, and try to weed out some of the dead links as well.
During this process I came across this research paper Early Identification of Autism: How Early Can We Go? mentioned above, and being aware of this thread I tried to see if I could find a free access pdf version.
Early Identification of Autism: How Early Can We Go?
It took me over an hour to read through the full paper, and you may find that if you download and print off the article it is easier to read, and a may help.

Stress is one of the other causes of my coping strategies to fail or desert me, and is probably why I needed to re-take English Langauge O'Level 5 times.

Sorry I disappeared from the thread!
IndigoBell- I am so sorry to hear about your DC suffering after vaccination :(((.
Chicjunkie, thank you.
NomdePC, thank you. My DD is yet to be diagnosed completely, but it isn't ASD. Therefore, I thought I'd ask those who have kids with ASD as I have just basic understanding of the condition.
Dolfrog, thank you! What a great link, will have a look, thanks again!
LeonieDelt, thank you.

Paribus
you might find this article interesting
Do Parents Recognize Autistic Deviant Behavior Long before Diagnosis? Taking into Account Interaction Using Computational Methods

Dolfrog, thank you!