April is Autism Awareness Month!

Let me start with a little back ground on Tristyn. I had a normal full term pregnancy with Tristyn, I was induced at 42 weeks. Tristyn was a big girl at 9 pounds even and 22 1/4 inches, she had some problems with low blood sugar and needed an IV for about 48 hours, but besides that she was perfectly healthy. She was a wonderful baby, she started smiling at 4 weeks, and sleeping through the night at 8 weeks, she was a very social baby. She was breast fed until almost 6 months old, and never had a problem.

We became concerned about her gross motor skills when we noticed she was way behind other babies her age. She didn't roll until 5 months, sit up - 9 months, crawl 13+ months, walk 18+ months, etc. She was enrolled in the birth to 3 program and they helped her out alot. One of the problems they found was that her joints were hyper flexible. At 2 1/2 years old she was still only using simple words - mom, dad, ball. So we also started speech therapy for her. She graduated from the program at age 3 and we started her in a early education program. This was the best thing we could have done.

We asked the B-3 therapists & her early ed. teachers if she could have Autism, she had several, what we call "quirks" and we were concerned. But we were always reasured that she just had some delays and would catch up. Well, last year at this time we sat down with her teachers, a school psycholigist, and the principal, and she was finally given the diagnosis of high functioning autism, which opened several educational services for her. So the lesson learned here is, if you think something is wrong, but the professionals tell you your child is fine, push it more, you know your child. I don't want to change Tristyn, or pump her full of meds, or do therapies that she is not comfortable with, I love her the way she is!! I just wanted the peace of mind of knowing what was going on.

Now as I mentioned before, she has some "quirks" Just recently she started adding the "zir" sound at the end of some words & sentences, this is very cute, espically when she says "yes" it comes out sounding like "yes sir." She also loves the word actually. Ask her if she likes something and you might get an answer like this "actually, I do "zir." These are some of her harmless quirks, one of the harder ones to deal with stems from her sensory issues, and that is a fear of "loud" public bathrooms - namely bathrooms with automatic toilets & hand dryers at echo. For some reason, this really hurts her ears - it's like torture to her. So if you are ever in a public restroom and hear a child screaming, please be sympathetic, it might be Tristyn.

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