When did you know your DC had ASD

[Mirshid]

I apologise in advance if this is the wrong place to post but I am out of my mind with worry and I'm hoping those of you with experience of ASD may be able to help me.
My dd is 8 months and is a beautiful smiley social girl but since the age of 5 mths has been virtually non verbal save for laughing which she will do if provoked several times a day. At 5 months she was having back and forth 'conversations' but these stopped abruptly and haven't resumed. HV can offer no explanation and her hearing check is clear. Her eye contact is good, and her non verbal communication seems good. She is happy to see people she knows and doesn't appear to have any sensory issues. Developmentally she seems to be hitting her milestones but as she is my first child I don't have any experience to draw on.

Can anyone tell me if their DC had language regression this early and more importantly what I can do to help her.

My DS was always a bit different. As a baby he was very placid and always smiling, wasn't really bothered about interacting with others and was quite happy sat on his own. He use to play repetively building and knocking down towers or lining up cars. As a baby he used to sit in front of a cupboard and empty it out and put everything back again. When i used to pick him up from nursery he was always sat by the bookshelf taking all the books off and putting them back on. He did have some language regression aged 18 months after he had been seriously ill in hospital with pneumonia. We're not sure whether the regression was caused by ASD or the illness, it could have been either. However he has never had SALT as he caught up a few months later.

He was slow at the majority of his milestones. But it really hit me when he was 3 and his behaviour was unmanageable. Once he started school all hell broke loose and he was unmanageable at school and that was when we got referred for an assessment.

However others will come and tell you that their DC's were completely different to mine, even though they also have ASD.
If she is meeting all of her milestones and interacting with you then i wouldn't worry too much at the moment. She is still very young. And even if there is a problem with her speech development it doesn't necessarily mean it is ASD.
Just enjoy her as much as you can and try not to worry for now as lots of babies catch up

She has had a proper hearing test in a soundproof room, they looked at pressure in the ears and did the test where she was rewarded with a puppet in a box when she looked to the sound so I am as satisfied as I can be as is the audiologist that it's not her hearing but the trouble is I want to know what it is and no one can really give me that answer I suppose, thank you for all the support thus far, I am just at a loss as how to help her it's like she has lost her voice, sometimes she sits and states at me and opens her mouth and nothing comes out except a low moaning noise when she's tired or frustrated.

It is incredibly difficult to give a diagnosis like ASD for such a young child, however I'd get on to the GP and ask for a SALT and Paed referral to determine if there's something physically wrong with your child's ability to speak. My dd has hypotonia and as a baby she could not suck for ages, come time for trying solids she could not chew. Those muscles are also used in speech so that was pretty much unintelligble for a long time to anyone but me.

Really great early signs thread, thanks Polter

I think I realised at around a year old that ds's behaviour and interests were different and it was not just me having no other children to compare his development against. He was passive and had little interest in all but a handful of toys.

Your dd is very young for anyone to assign the change in her ability to vocalise to ASD, but hopefully you may get some answers from a SALT.

Thanks for the replies, I think I am going slowly mad I don't know now whether I instinctively feel there is 'something' or whether I am in such a state I am making a big deal of it... No one else seems particularly worried, my mum says I was a quiet baby and both my husband and myself are quiet adults.... Could she just be a late starter, I am a physio so fairly confident she has no issues with muscle tone, she is chewing and eating (blw) well with little gagging. She seems engaged with us, checking in when playing, smiling and laughing at us and others and is interested in all toys/ what's going on in fact I'd say she is positively nosy! She puts her arms out to be picked up when I say up and turns to her name most of the time.
It is just the speech and the fact that it started and stopped. Does anyone have any other ideas as to causes? The HV is ringing mon to arrange a developmental check and I am seeing the gp on wed so hopefully we can go from there.