Early signs of concern.......

                          Something in my gut was telling me that there was something wrong. I know people thought I was crazy and a typical new mom overly concerned about their child. But something was just not right. David was not reaching some developmental stages early on. There were pretty good things though. He was pretty good at being able to take his bottle. I tried to breast feed and it was just not working and it was not a thrill at all. As soon as we offered him the bottle he just scarfed it down. :) He didn’t have a problem with formula at all. That was the great thing. From the time we brought him home and once we changed to the bottle he was sleeping just fine. He slept three to four hours at a time so that meant we only had to get up twice an evening. He was a pretty easy newborn.
                          It was hard for me not to compare him to other babies his age. I saw things early on that concerned me. He HATED tummy time. He HATED it! It was so frustrating. He would just scream.....not just cry out of being annoyed....scream from the moment we put him on his tummy. He had a hard time lifting his head. It seemed like forever before he just was annoyed. He was five months old when he finally would lay on his tummy and lift his head without screaming. Once we got him to play on his tummy it took him awhile to get him to roll over. He didn’t roll over until he was 7 months old. He didn’t start crawling until he was 9 months old. He was around 11 months old when he sat up on his own. Once he started crawling he of course was everywhere! LOL I was so happy to see him start to explore. Finally, on the day of his first birthday party he stood for the very first time. He pulled himself up as he played with his toy box. I was so happy! When he was 16 months old he finally met a developmental milestone on time...... he took his first steps on his own. Brian had come home from work and he saw him at the door let go of the table and took 3 steps towards him! We were soooooo excited!!!!!
                          I have to admit like everyone else most of the time even though I had that gut feeling I did think that I was just paranoid at times. I kept trying to agree with everyone who said to me that he was just a boy and boys develop later than girls.  I began to hate that mostly because the more differences I saw in David the stronger my feeling became. I had watched so many other children around his age meet milestones way ahead of him. I began to be hard on myself. Was there something wrong with me? Was I a good mom? I think we all think that when our children are not doing what we think they should be doing. But I still had that gut feeling and was screaming inside for someone to listen. It was a hard time. In my heart I knew that there was something not right. I knew that Autism ran in my side of the family and I knew that it was a hereditary disorder. I kept trying to put that thought in the back of my head. But when we started to feed him baby food I believe that is was confirmed in my heart that something was definitely wrong. He was around 5 months old. This was going to be a difficult journey. I started to Google early signs of Autism in infants and I didn’t like what I had read and I had to acknowledge that this could be a possibility. My heart just sank......