A question to parents of Autistic Children

[christy]

I'm not offended either I too think its good that someone takes an interest in Autism.

I do understand the fear of it now.... totally. But remember, Autism is a spectrum. There are varying degrees of it, and not everyone is low functioning, or has a hard time communicating. Heck, most of Silicon Valley is ASD.... seriously, its a majority there and its considered "normal". Bill Gates is Autistic. Its not the end of the world to have the diagnosis

[murraysmum]

my son was born 10 days overdue and was a 7 hr labour

i dont think its caused by what ever its caused by and with reasearch we will find out why one day

[~Saram~]

Wow, interesting article. I haven't read it before and honestly my brain is kind of fuddled at the moment and I skipped over a lot of it but here is my 2 c worth.

My son has autism - Aspergers. My SIL has 2 children on the spectrum and we are guessing that my other SIL may have one as well. Just after my DS was diagnoised my SIL rang me about a study linking pre-eclampsia with autism as we both had pre-eclampsia. I have also read the ones about vaccinations and quite and recently there was a report that they have found 4 genes that 'may contribute' to autism.

Our story is that we were induced with syntocin after rapid onset of pre-eclampsia. I remember vividly the horrible moment when they broke my waters and I could feel my DS start to panic. He was born 5 hrs later (only 2 on syntocin as I ripped out my drip and the midwives agreed to see how I went on my own) and he also got stuck under my hip bone and I pushed for 2 hrs - so I guess as births go it wasn't untraumatic.

Having said that I believe that DS had issues before he was born. in utero his movements were extremely forceful. He responded to loud noises and bass music very strongly - after one movie I was left very bruised and extremely sore.

I guess you can also look at it from the other point of view, knowing that labour stems from contributuions from mother and baby - perhaps it's not that inducement causes autism, rather that children with autism require interventions in their birth???

Also I think the difficulty with autism is that it is so different. Some people aren't diagnoised until they are 8-9 yrs old. Many parents see big changes around 1 or 4 yrs old and believe this is when they're child autism starts. Hard to define a study when each family perceives it so differently