Our story.....

I am starting this blog to document our journey in recovering two of our children who have autism. This is as much for my own benefit in keeping track of things as it is for others who are interested in seeing what we are doing.

My husband and I live in NJ with our six kids. They range in age from four year old triplets to 17 years old. Two of our triplets, a boy and girl, are on the spectrum.

After developing normally they started to lose skills. While they both babbled and had a couple words, by the time they were a year and a half or a bit older, they didn't seem to understand anything anymore. Right around their second birthday my daughter got her first word-"more". We were signing thanks to Signing Times dvd's but this was the only sign she was doing at this time. Pretty soon she added more words and signs. Flashcards also really helped and my kids loved them. My daughter had sensory issues from the time we brought her home from the hospital. They were preemies and she was in the nicu for two months. It was horrible to try to hold her only to have her cry to be put down. Eventually she stopped this and began loving to be held and hugged. Then, later on she would hold her feet in the air laying in her crib. She would be grunting as she tried to hold them up while she fell asleep. Later I heard that children with stomach pains do this. Our doc said it was "normal". She didn't attempt solid food until she was 8 months old and even then preferred formula. When she started baby foods she would only eat the fruits and veggies-meat was hard to get into her. She was always really coordinated but rough. She would accidentally pull her sisters hair because she had to hold it in her hands to feel it. Her hugs quickly turned into tackles. As she gained words, her speech didn't really expand. She repeated the same questions over and over--car rides were tough! If she wanted a drink she would just yell "drink!". She couldn't answer a simple question about where she went. Our daughter also started flapping. When she was excited she would flap while her mouth was open.

Our son was the opposite. He had no muscle tone after being the first one to hold his head up earlier. He was very lethargic and clumsy. After trying to sing when he was only three months old and saying "mama" he now had no words and barely made sounds. He gagged at the sight of certain things like playdough and smells from his babyfood. (Granted most people gag from those smells!) His loss of muscle tone included his oral muscles and he could no longer stick out his tongue. He had trouble chewing and swallowing. His sensory issues were so bad he could not touch any food-even chips or crackers. He became obsessed with the letter "O" and anything round. He would spin anything he could get his hands on--actually we were impressed at some of the things he managed to get spinning! He would pop the nipple down in his bottle and unscrew the cap so he could spin it. I remember the day he started his physical stimming-rocking his hands back and forth like a ski jumper and yelling. This happened more and more often.

During this time when my kids were going downhill they had four strep infections in about seven months. The last one gave my son a horrible yeast diaper rash. My daughter developed OCD symptoms. Both of them had their tonsills and adenoids removed because of sleep apnea. They haven't had a strep infection since so I wonder if the virus was just sitting in their tonsills and not being killed by all the antibiotics they were given. While all these red flags were waving-the doctors never mentioned autism. And they kept vaccinating them--even when my son had a cold.

Right before they turned three, they were diagnosed before they started the district preschool. My son was diagnosed with ASD and my daughter with PDD-NOS. I was angry and upset but all the sings were there. I was given the broken down symptoms by everyone else-Sensory Integration Dysfunction, Apraxia, low tone, delayed speech etc. But nobody had ever said "Autism" to me before. I wish someone had--we could be farther ahead in this journey than we are now.