If you have 1 or more with ASD would you have another child?

[Marne]

Sorry to be so blunt but today dd2 had her first apointment with the autistic dx team, as many of you may know, dd1 has AS(we get dx next month) and dd2 has possible ASD or speach disorder. We are not expecting a dx for dd2 for at least 18 months (possibly alot longer).
Today i asked the doctor/paed 'if both dd's are on the specrum, what are the chances of our next child being on the spectrum?' she adviced that we wait until both dd's have a dx as if they are both on the spectrum there is a very high chance of the next being on the spectrum.

Dh and i have been talking about trying for no3 and we were going to start trying after x-mas. If we wait until the dd's get dx we could be waiting 2/3 years, dh was 40 this year and i think if we wait he will change his mind about having another altogether. If both dd's are on the spectrum would it be unfair to try for another as another child with sn would put more presure on the family, should i be dedicating all my time to the 2 lovely dd's i already have?

The thought of not having another upsets me as i have always wanted a large family.

Have any of you decided to have another child knowing that there is a high risk of ASD?

Marne, I think you should only wait if you are sure that you wouldn't want another child with ASD. Otherwise, it is fairly irrelevant, and there are no guarantees in life anyway.

I love my dd's to bits and would love another even if it had ASD, i worry about how my family will react, mainly my mother and dh's father, i know dh will also worry about how we will cope as he is getting older (he thinks 40 is old). I also think maybe i am being selfish wanting another and not thinking about how the rest of the family will cope.

thankyou Mel and congratulations.
I will talk to dh when he gets home, i know i could cope with another but im not sure dh could, he's finding it hard to except anything is wrong with dd2 and has not helped out much with dd2 (learning PECS etc..).

Dh has 3 other children by his ex who show no signs of Autism, im thinking maybe we are just a bad match IYKWIM. Dh shows traits of AS but i can also see some traits in me and more so my father.

DS1 is ADHD and nearly drove me insane...

I desperately wanted more, and DH wanted too to...

DS2 is only mildly dyspraxic and dyslexic, then DS3 arrived who is completely NT but has a gift for irritating!

Time went on...

DS4 arrived and was the healthiest child ive had and shortly followed by DS5 who is autistic and non-verbal but is very affectionate on his terms, has a laugh that can roll away storms, and a scream that can curdle milk!

There are no guarantees as lou said, both DH and me show signs of AS, maternal grandmother was AS, paternal grandmother is ADHD as is maternal grandfather! and yet 3 of my 5 children are fine!!! If i had been put off by DS1, DS2,3,4 or 5 would never have brightened anyones lives! And with hindsight (an easy thing to do i know) but it actually has been very good for DS1 to have so many sibs

I think: ignore the 'risks' and have another if you want to, and if you dont want to then dont - dont regret what you do do, only what you dont!

In our case ds2 was already here by the time ds1 was dx'ed with ASD. Then about a year later ds2 was dx'ed with AS. We knew that we wanted another child and tbh we almost assumed that they too would probably have ASD. Dd has so far turned out to be NT.

Obviously a lot will depend on the personalities/needs of the individual children but in our case I think that having siblings has been a good thing for our children:

Ds1 is happy because he has 2 people smaller than he is who are generally happy to be bossed about told what to do during his games.

Ds2 is happy because dd loves to race around the house with him (ds1 prefers to sit quietly in a corner somewhere).

This in turn pleases ds1 because dd keeps ds2 busy and out of his way.

Dd hero-worships her brothers.

From an SN perspective I think both boys have benefitted from having their siblings around them. Ds1 is very keen to teach his brother about the rules that he has learned over the years and has been a big influence on ds2 wrt language skills. Ds2 is the more sociable of the two and has helped to bring ds1 out of his shell a bit more.

I think that with ASD especially it can be very difficult to predict what is going to happen. Needs change as they get older, whether for better or for worse. When mine were younger there always seemed to be something that I had to sit down with them to do, like OT exercises or SALT stuff. Now that they are both at school the staff there have taken over a lot of that and there's much less for me to actually do. Ds2 still has SALT exercises and activities to work on but as the SALT visits him at school I rarely need to take him to her clinic. Ds1 still has OT exercises to do to help his fine motor skills but again the school also does a lot of that too.

Good luck with the discussions with dh. xx

Thankyou, i will show dh your post's as i think it will help him to understand.

At the moment dh wants to wait till we get at least dd1 dx (which will be next month).

In a way its nice that the dd's have each other, both on the spectrum, i think it will help them growing up as they will have simalar needs.

Fingers crossed dh won't change his mind and decide against another.