Miss 1 had here 18month old check up at our local Doctor today. In I went all prepared, baby book at the ready. Questionnaire filled out. But not expecting what came next.
As most of you will know, I have six children, four of them have been diagnosed with ASD, Autism Spectrum Disorder. All of them have only been diagnosed in the last two years, prior to that we did know that they had a few challenges but they had not been labeled as such.
Now I’m not completely naive, I know the chances of Miss 1 being on the rainbow spectrum are considerably high due to her siblings diagnosis. However, until there is a clear indication that she is in fact Autistic, I had decided not to spend all my energy worry about it. Until today.
As we went through the usual 18month old health check, my GP began asking several other questions that I had not been expecting. How long can she maintain eye contact? Dose she react to loud noises? Is she light sensitive? Dose she behave like other 18month olds?
As I sat there and answered every question, I knew then and there that Miss 1 is Autistic. She had all the signs. She hates light, especially sunlight. She doesn’t look people in the eye. She likes to hang of everything. She flaps (something I thought she was copying of her sister). The more I thought about it, the more it stood out.
When Miss 3 was diagnosed just last year I spent the best part of a month trying to convince myself that her doctors were wrong and that she was perhaps just mimicking her brothers. That she didn’t share all of their physical issues, so she couldn’t possibly be Autistic.
Now as I sit here looking at my beautiful 1 year old I am thinking to myself, why? What is the point in wondering? She either is or she isn’t. No amount of stressing or denial is going to change the outcome. The world will not stop turning if one more of my children happens to be a little bit different.
It will not change the way i love her. It will not change the way I raise her. So why do I have that ache of pain in my stomach? That feeling that if I had done something different I could have made a difference. This is my struggle today.
While today’s visit to the doctors lead to nothing more than his advice that we should monitor Miss 1, that he could already see the signs, but that nothing was a definitive yes or no yet. It was enough for me.
So I have given myself the next 24 hours. 24 hours to mourn the life that she could have had. 24 hours to feel like shit and blame myself for everything, as mothers usually do. 24 hours to feel sorry for myself. Then that’s it.
Why?
Because it’s not the end of the world. My daughter is healthy and happy. Just like her brothers and sister who have ASD, I have no doubts that they will live full and happy lives.
Will there be challenges? Yes, but everyone has challenges, this will be hers and it is mine. We will live with it together. As a family. We will meet every hurdle head on and we will succeed.
