My "Normal" Baby's 12-Month Regression

In my former life as an autism-fearing, anti-vax mom, stories like my son's kept me awake at night. I'd pore over all the tales on the internet: "I took my normal baby for his 12-month shots, and the next day, he was autistic."

My son did seem to be typical, by all accounts. Even though my mommy-instinct told me something was different, Early Intervention reassured me after two screenings-- one at six weeks and one at six months-- that he was doing fine. His pediatrician echoed their statements. The consensus was: this is a completely normal baby. Maybe a little wobbly, and on the late side when it comes to crawling and sitting up, but he's fine.

Well, then my "completely normal baby" started nearing his first birthday. He was cruising, standing unsupported, responding to his name, saying a few words. Then, bam: two weeks ago, he stopped being able to stand alone. He stopped cruising. He stopped taking steps. He no longer waved consistently when someone told him to say bye-bye. He stopped answering to his name. He traded his vocabulary of five words for a single one: "Hand," which he started repeating over and over again ad nauseum while looking at a hand.

If this had happened just two weeks later than it did, it would have coincided perfectly with his twelve-month vaccines, which included MMR. But, because it happened before his twelve-month shots, I know with certainty that his developmental regression had nothing to do with his vaccines.

You don't have to take my word for it, though: every major medical establishment in the world agrees that here is no link between immunization and autism. Studies involving a total of millions of children have concluded that vaccines don't increase the risk of autism or worsen autism symptoms in children who are predisposed. Vaccines do, however, coincide with the times when the first signs of autism show up: 12 months, 18 months, and two years. It's easy to see how the timing of these regressions and symptoms can look suspicious.

But, just as I know with certainty that my oldest child was autistic before she was vaccinated-- by the mere fact that she was diagnosed with developmental delays before she'd had a single shot-- I know with certainty that my son's developmental regression occurred before he was vaccinated. It further confirms what I've known for a long time, which is that I gave my kids autism through wonderfully unique genes, not through anything in their environment.

My son will be meeting with Early Intervention tomorrow, and once again, I'm struck by how profoundly different my feelings and experiences have been between when my oldest was diagnosed with developmental delays and when my youngest was. As I've written about before, I was naive and impressionable and full of self-blame seven years ago, but now? This is a walk in the park. Where once I felt fear and sadness and apprehension, I now feel nothing but overwhelming love for my children. I'm excited to watch them grow and thrive and become their own beautiful selves.

I can't wait to see what comes next. Parents with neurotypical kids have a fairly good idea of what they're getting. I have the privilege of discovering my kids anew every single day. Their passions become my passions. Their triumphs become my triumphs. I can't wait to guide my second child through whatever help he needs and then celebrate his successes, however small or large. I can't wait to learn what his strengths are and to mold my parenting to fit the ever-changing needs of a child who marches to the beat of a different drummer. I am genuinely excited to be taking this journey with my children, their tiny hands in mine.

Autism acceptance and vaccine advocacy became my life's work after a string of surprising coincidences, so I believe that it's a wonderful act of fate that I was once again blessed with a child who, by his mere existence, is showing the world about the necessity of evidence-based health care and the reality of autism as a heritable genetic condition. It will be a while before I find out for sure if my son really does have autism. It's possible, though not likely, that he will be neurotypical and just had a temporary developmental glitch. But, if he is autistic, I know for sure that it was encoded in his DNA, not a vaccine. I know for sure that he is not broken, but a beautiful and perfect human being made exactly the way nature intended him.

Don't Wait Too Long to Introduce Solid Food

One of the biggest weaknesses of the crunchy community is the constant struggle to one-up any medical recommendations. The evidence suggests that delayed cord clamping might be beneficial? Great, let's leave the placenta to rot. The AAP says that room-sharing is healthiest for babies? Let's demand bed-sharing for absolutely everyone, even when the mother is on Xanax and hydrocodone, and then blame the anti-cosleeping movement when a mom kills two babies in a row this way.  Experts recommend waiting until around six months to introduce solids? Well, let's go ahead and wait a year. 

I understand where the mistake comes from. After all, we do hear constantly that breast milk is ideal nutrition for babies for the first year of life. And we've heard that introducing solids too early can cause a variety of problems, including childhood obesity and the health effects that come with it. It's easy to infer from this information that it's safe and healthy to wait a full year before introducing solid food-- but that doesn't mean it's correct.

My son eating kale at seven months. He survived.

I've seen the scenario played out many times in breastfeeding support groups. A breastfeeding mom "hears" that it's best to wait as long as possible to introduce solid food, since breast milk is the perfect source of nutrition for babies and should be the primary source of nutrition in the first year. Yet, every mom I've known who has done this has ended up with the same thing: a baby who, by fifteen months or so, is suffering from failure to thrive and anemia. The mom almost always wants to know of "natural" ways to address this that won't compromise her breastfeeding relationship.

I might have been one of those moms if it hadn't been for the fact that both of my kids were positively insistent on eating solid foods before one year-- or even six months. My youngest, in particular, has demanded since four months of age that he absolutely must have whatever everyone else is eating. I'm lucky because of that, because the risks of waiting too long for solids can be serious.

You've probably heard that "food before one is just for fun," or some similar adage, from your pediatrician. About fifteen years ago, doctors started really emphasizing that babies should not be eating solids too early in life, because they were finding that babies who were given a lot of early solids (like cereal in their bottles at one month) were not healthy. And it's true that, for the most part, solids in the first year are for playing and learning. That doesn't make them any less important, though: knowing how to eat, and enjoy, healthy foods is critical. It's not good when your one-and-a-half-year-old doesn't like food at all and just wants to nurse, all because you thought that the "just for fun" meant that it was unnecessary.

Solids in the first year are also nutritionally pretty important, especially for breastfed babies. While breast milk is definitely the preferred and healthiest way to feed babies, it has its limitations. For one thing, most mothers' breast milk supply starts to even out at around six months. The babies' bodies need more and more calories, but their  mothers' breast milk production can't keep up. The result is that the little ones just don't get as much milk as they need, and after several months of this, they can stop growing or even sometimes lose weight.

Breast milk also contains almost no iron. Babies' bodies are prepared for this: they store up a lot of iron before birth and it keeps them going for several months. But midway through their first year of life, that iron starts to deplete and they need to be getting at least a little from their diets. It doesn't take much-- just a little bitty bit of cereal or prunes or greens or even beans-- but that small amount of iron is critical for keeping babies' brains and bodies developing normally. 

If you're breastfeeding, your baby should already be getting a vitamin D supplement, but on the off chance that you're for some reason not doing that, your little one needs to get vitamin D from his diet. A lot of baby cereals are fortified with vitamin D, as are baby yogurts. Introducing vitamin D-rich solids in the first year is absolutely necessary, especially for breastfed babies. 

Plus, while most moms believe that waiting to introduce solids will prevent allergies, science has actually found the opposite to be true. While pediatricians used to recommend delayed solids to prevent allergies, that recommendation may have actually caused more allergies. That's why, after a study in 2010 and several reviews that followed it, the AAP turned back on the delayed-solid recommendation and said that it's actually best to introduce food sooner rather than later.

So when should you feed solids? Your baby will probably let you know: he'll start grabbing food off your plate and generally showing interest in what the Big People are eating. The American Academy of Pediatrics further suggests looking for these signs:

• Your baby should be able to hold his head steady while he's sitting in a high chair.
• Babies who are ready for solids open their mouths when they see food, especially if you hold a spoon directly in front of their mouths.
• Your little one should swallow solids without much trouble. If he spits or gags, wait a few more weeks.
• Most of the time, babies aren't ready for solids until they're physically large enough: about 13 pounds. That means premies and low-birthweight babies might need to start solids a little later.

For most babies, those milestones are going to be reached at around six months, although any time between four and seven months can be considered normal. Before that point, the AAP strongly encourages moms to exclusively breastfeed if at all possible. After that, breast milk should still be the main staple of you little one's diet until at least his first birthday. But that doesn't mean that there's no point in giving him solids at all.

Breastfeeding is great. Breastfeeding exclusively for six months is even better. Giving mostly breast milk for at least one year is fantastic. However, it's not helpful to you or your baby to forgo solids entirely for a year or more. Not only does it not provide any benefits to either of you, but it can even be dangerous. Go ahead, guilt-free: give your baby solids when he's ready and when your pediatrician approves-- not when your Breast Buddies suggest it.

I Went From Screen-Free to Handing My Baby an iPhone

When my oldest child was born in 2008, the recommendations were clear: screen time of any sort was absolutely off-limits. This wasn't just something that I'd heard within the "crunchy" community. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Zero to Three, the two primary science-based authorities on parenthood, both said that "screen" entertainment, such as TV and computers, was not at all acceptable for babies and toddlers.

I took their word for it, at absolute face value. I felt like there was something emanating from the screen that could somehow harm my baby. When I wrote late at night in the rocking chair, I would turn her head away or cover her eyes. In the waiting room at the pediatrician's office, I would constantly turn her head toward me, repeating, "No screen time," much to the confusion of the parents around me.

This went on for three years, at which point she started getting screen time with strict limits.

I had it in my head that a child who sees screens during key phases of development won't correctly learn how reality works. The way I saw it, basic concepts like object permanence (that an object continues to exist when out of view), size, movement, and communication fall apart on screen. Babies and toddlers are still learning what faces and objects are, and what they can do. On a screen, all bets are off: anything is real and nothing is real. The expert recommendation of zero screen time seemed to fit my ideology.

But in the six years between my daughter's birth and my son's birth, something happened: the smart phone explosion. In just six years, screens went from being specific objects with specific functions, to magical machines that did everything: a phone, music-player, computer, camera, camcorder, teleconference caller, and video game console all in one. This changed so many things.

It started with music. My son loves his lullabies and there were times that I would pick out his favorite and put it in his car seat with him while he fell asleep. No harm done, right? Then I found a number of apps that were, really, identical to the baby toys I might have found in the store: push the button and it makes a sound. He delighted in "helping" me take pictures and examining them afterward. And, most importantly, when I had to be separated from him for medical reasons, it meant that he was still able to see my face and know who I was.

I felt a twinge of guilt about it, but I couldn't see any evidence of the harm when I would entertain him with a vocabulary-building or lullaby-playing baby app while I stole a five-minute shower. I couldn't even see evidence of harm when I let him play with it for the entirety of a long car ride. After all-- developmentally speaking-- how different is an educational app from a boardbook or toy?

I was relieved but not surprised when Zero to Three caught up to the modern world and issued recommendations that were in agreement with my experience as a mom: instead of "no screen time," they now recommend smarter screen time. Of course, they still don't recommend using screens as a go-to babysitter or pacifier, but they say that introducing screens early in life can be just fine as long as the child is getting plenty of age-appropriate content and parent interaction-- and as long as screen time is balanced out with time spent playing with real, three-dimensional toys.

I don't want my son to become a smartphone zombie or to value screens over the real world. But I do think that in today's world, screens are so ubiquitous and so useful that it's unreasonable to forgo them all the way through toddlerhood. Today, I'm a fan of smart screen time instead of no screen time.

Developmental Delays Made Me a Mother

My son had a developmental evaluation a few days ago. It was his second in his eight months of life.


My son ultimately passed his screening, though he’s lagging a bit behind average in his gross motor development. This didn’t faze me at all; we’re a family of late walkers and early talkers. We’re clumsy and intellectual. Maybe he’ll surprise us and grow up to be a star athlete rather than a book worm, but for now, he’s following a path toward becoming himself, and, like his hair color and eye color, it's likely to imitate his closest relatives. 

The strange thing is that I hadn’t always been this accepting. Almost seven years ago, I had encountered the professionals at Early Intervention for the first time, and it was shocking and scary for me. I had cried. I had screamed. I had punched my pillow. I had called friends and relatives in absolute choking tears. Why?

All because of one tiny little glitch in my daughter’s development: she wasn’t supporting weight on her legs. It was a melodramatic, hysterical reaction to have to something so incredibly insignificant, but, at the time, it seemed like one of the biggest crises I had ever encountered.

 After my son’s evaluation, I started thinking about how much I have changed in the last seven years. I did an archaeological dig through the ancient ruins once known as Myspace. In one of my last posts before I abandoned the glittery .gifs and horrible background music, I had begged for help from my friends on a blog post:

 

:( 
I took Vivian to the doctor yesterday and everything seemed just fine. The doctor was gushing about how chubby and cute and bright she was, and was saying that she seemed to be ahead of the curve on every milestone. "She's doing great, you're doing an excellent job with her!" the doctor had said. 
And then came the reflex test. :( Vivian is way behind the typical curve with controlling her feet; she's supposed to spread her legs out and try to balance on her feet as I put her down, and she doesn't. I had no idea that she was supposed to be doing that. :( Most babies her age can stand for a  few seconds with support. 
The doctor looked at her legs, spine, and feet, and said there didn't seem to be any physical problem, and said that because Vivian's so talkative and aware, it's highly unlikely that there's a mental problem. But, for some reason or another, she's behind on her motor development... Far enough behind that she's going to need classes with a group that helps children with developmental delays. I can't even describe the way it felt when they handed me the pamphlet for Hand in Hand, which deals mostly with children who have autism and cerebral palsy. It's not that I think she's "better" than children with delays, I just never imagined that she would have any.
 I feel horrible and panicked and guilty. I don't know why I've got it in my head that I did something wrong, but I feel like I'm a terrible mother. 
Most likely, she just doesn't know how to use her legs much because she never has to (I'm holding her all the time) but it still scares me that it's a significant enough delay to warrant treatment. The doctor reassured me that it's very unlikely that there's anything truly wrong with her, and said that, most likely, she's just going to be a late walker. She's either ahead of the curve or right on it with all her other keystone developments. I still feel really awful, though. :(
Please hug me. 



“I feel like I'm a terrible mother.”Oh, how those feelings had wounded me, back then. I had done everything right. All-organic diet, exclusive breastfeeding, natural birth, delayed cord clamping, no medications, no mercury, no vaccines. I did everything right, and as much as I had tried to tell myself that I wasn’t so arrogant as to think that developmental delays only happened to bad parents, the feeling was there.I did everything right. This was supposed to happen to someone else.When I see the things I wrote and felt during what seemed like a total crisis—something that really wasn’t a big deal at all—I feel a conflicted jumble of anger and pity for the mother I was seven years ago. I want to hug her. She was asking  for hugs, after all, with the tone of a scared child who had accidentally waded into the deep-end before knowing how to swim out. She was a mom who knew how to be a good parent only if everything went exactly as she planned. And when it didn’t? She thought it was all over.Here’s what I wish I could go back and say to that scared woman, myself at twenty-one: You’ve only been a mom for six months. You have so, so, so much life ahead of you and your children (yes, children, plural—there’s a black-eyed baby boy waiting for you in your future!). You are so naïve that, right now, you honestly think that the best moments of parenthood are already behind you, just because of a failed developmental screening.

They’re not. They’re still ahead of you. They’re still ahead of me, too.Your daughter’s developmental delay is the very, very beginning of you becoming a mother. You’ve loved her for the last six months, but you weren’t her mother yet. Not really. Because being a mother isn’t about knowing what to do based on those endless hours you spend poring over the internet, plagued by your neurosis. Being a mother is about love, and it’s about acceptance. And until you can really look at yourself and say, “My child is different, and I love her exactly the way she is,” you’re not a mom. You’re just practicing.If your daughter hadn’t been born different, it might have been years before you really, truly became a mother. You would have accepted her, but the acceptance would have been superficial and empty-- acceptance of an idea of who she should be, not an acceptance of who she actually is. How can anyone say that they really love someone, if they want to change who that person is? How can you really say that you’re a mother, if the child you really love is an expectation—not a reality?
There are so many wonderful things in your future, and your daughter’s developmental differences aren’t obstacles to that. They are catalysts for it. That early babbling? She’ll say her first word in just a month and sentences won’t be far behind. Later, she’s going to spend hours upon hours talking to you about cats and dinosaurs and magic and love. That clumsiness? It’s perfect. You’re not going to have to struggle to keep up with her, or worry about her climbing your countertops. All those things that just make her seem… odd? Oh, Juniper. That’s the best of the best of it. She will be wonderful. You will love her, and you will love her differences, and you will not want to change a single thing about her.One day, you will bring a little baby boy into the world, and it will be entirely different because you will have already learned this critically important lesson. You will already know how to be a mom, and when you meet him, his soft little body in your arms and his fuzzy black hair against your fingertips, you won’t fall in love with an expectation of who he is. You will fall in love with anything and everything that he may become. You will know the most important lesson a mother can possibly know: that your job of creating your child is over when they are born, and that your task from then forward is to discover them. You will be a better mother because of the lessons your older child taught you.We have a long, long way to go. Neither of our children are anywhere near the difficult ages of adolescence, and both of them are happy and healthy, and the biggest challenges we have in parenthood are almost certainly waiting for us down the road. These are days that we will remember as the happiest: when she was a bouncing ball of energy nearing seven years old, and when he was a thoughtful little cuddle-bear who loved touch-and-feel books and lullabies. Things will be hard, one day, but that day isn’t yet, for me or for you. Right now, from your world in 2008 and my world in 2015, we are both looking at the good times. Enjoy them while they last, and I’ll do my best to do the same.This isn’t the end. It’s the beginning of something wonderful and magical.

I Gave My Child Autism

I gave my child autism.

It wasn’t because of vaccines. It wasn’t because of tuna. It wasn’t because of formula. It wasn’t because of Tylenol, ultrasounds, antidepressants, Pitocin, tobacco, television, or pesticides.

How do I know? Because she wasn’t exposed to any of these things when she was first diagnosed with developmental delays.

Yet, I know it, from the bottom of my heart: I gave my child autism.

My first clue that I gave my child autism came when she was in the middle of an evaluation by a speech-language pathologist at two and a half years of age. The therapist had noted that her eye contact was poor, but acceptable for her age.

“Oh,” I explained, looking straight at my lap, “Well, that’s probably a learned behavior. We just don’t really ‘do’ eye contact in our little family. I’ve never been much of an eye contact type.”

The speech therapist bit her lip.

The same pattern was played out time and time again as we danced between physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, neurologists, psychologists, and teachers.

“No, she’s not potty-trained, but I still had accidents all the way into second grade. It just runs in the family.”

“Hyperlexia? Yeah, she’s a great reader. My family is full of early readers.”

“Picky eating is just something she got from me. I don’t like food much. And as a kid, I would completely flip out if someone tried to make me eat with a spoon or eat foods that had touched each other on my plate. No big deal."

“Clumsiness runs in the family. I couldn’t ride my bike until I was eight, so the motor delays are just in her DNA, that's all.”

“Oh, sure, she won’t wear her pants correctly, but that’s just another thing she got from me. You should have seen how I use to shriek if someone put a turtleneck on me!”

“Sure, she can’t dress herself. But I couldn’t dress myself at her age, either. I was almost eight before I could tie my own shoes. Fourteen before I could put my hair in a ponytail. No big deal.”

“The chewing on her hair and shirt collars—she probably learned that from me. I chew my shirt collars to shreds. It’s why my wife doesn’t let me borrow her clothes anymore.”

“Yeah, I know, but obsessive interests are just a thing we do in our family. You should hear the Pandora’s Box that opens when I’m given an opportunity to talk about the taxonomy of freshwater fish. We Russos are just passionate people.”

It was when I said this that I noticed the expression on the school psychologist’s face—the desperate attempt at a poker face, like someone trying to choose between choking on a laugh and spitting it all over the table.

“Maybe,” she said, pursing her lips carefully and jotting something down in her notebook, “You might want to consider getting yourself an evaluation. Most autistic people of your generation weren’t diagnosed, especially if they were verbal.”

Me? Autistic? Could I be?

Really?

In my own childhood, I certainly had some signs, but the symptoms I had were all explained away with one label or another. My avoidance of certain foods and clothes, and my extreme passion for things that interested me, were diagnosed as OCD. The nonsensical blur of numbers that appeared every time I saw a math test was diagnosed as dyscalcula. My strange patterns of learning were just assumed to be part of the developmental fingerprint of a gifted and eccentric child.

I am one of many people who, today, would likely be diagnosed with autism, although during the 1990s, the diagnosis was almost exclusively reserved for children who were nonverbal. Children like me were given other diagnoses. Sometimes they fit; sometimes they didn’t. But the pattern that set me apart from the norm was there-- and was undoubtedly similar to my daughter's.

In fact, the majority of scientists believe that there is no “autism epidemic” at all—that people with autism are no more common than they were 20, or 50, or 1,000 years ago. Autistic individuals have always been a part of human society. It just wasn’t until recently that the condition was correctly identified. It was even more recently, in 2013, that medical science finally acknowledged that Asperger’s syndrome and PDD-NOS are simply variations of autism, not distinct conditions. The science of autism changes constantly, and we quickly realize that many people with autism have been overlooked or misdiagnosed.

Consider these two studies, for example. One looked at the diagnoses of children in United States special education from 1984 to 2003. They found a huge increase in the number of cases of autism, and a corresponding decrease in diagnoses of mental r*tardation and other learning disabilities. Children with the exact same symptoms—little or no speech, sensory differences, difficulty with socializing, and learning challenges—were called “mentally r*traded” in 1983 and called “autistic” in 2003. The rate of one diagnosis went straight up while the rate of the other vanished to nearly zero, at the exact same rate. Likewise, many kids who in the 1990s who were diagnosed as obsessive-compulsive or ADD/ADHD would have been labeled as autistic today. The study’s authors concluded that there is no increase in the number autistic children, only the number of autistic children who are correctly diagnosed.

The other study directly compared this data, along with other studies about the incidence of autism diagnosis, with the incidence of the notorious MMR, or measles-mumps-rubella, vaccine. The conclusion: “There has (probably) been no real increase in the incidence of autism. There is no scientific evidence that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine or the mercury preservative used in some vaccines plays any part in the aetiology or triggering of autism, even in a subgroup of children with the condition.”  
In other words: no, MMR doesn’t cause autism, ever, and autism probably isn’t on the rise anyway.

Autism is almost entirely genetic. The studies about the heritability of autism, particularly twin studies, have found that over 90% of the differences between autistic and non-autistic people are because of DNA alone. In about 20% of these cases, the genetic differences are linked to a specific, measurable chromosomal abnormality like fragile X or 22q11.2 deletion. The others are far more complex and harder to find, but still clearly inheritable, and appear to be just as genetic in origin as a child’s eye color and skin tone.

My youngest child is eight months old. He just learned to sit up a two weeks ago, much to the excitement of his 7-year-old sister, who proudly declared that, “Maybe he has gross motor delays, and just might be autistic like Big Sister!”

She leaned toward my chubby, black-eyed baby boy and cooed, “We’re all very special in this family. This family is full of brain problems and love.”

He grinned, leaned forward, and planted his big, toothy mouth against her cheek. He wrapped his little arms around her head and gave her his drooly “kiss” while they both giggled with absolute delight. Then he toppled over awkwardly and I scooped him into my arms.

This family is full of brain problems and love. Some of the brain problems are autism. Others look a lot like autism. Some of them—like my son’s-- might not be autism at all, just normal variations of human development that follow unique, meandering patterns no more or less exceptional than the color of their eyes or the shape of their noses.

I made my children many things: olive-skinned, dark-eyed, black-haired. I made them affectionate and sensitive and cuddly. I also made them clumsy, awkward, and quirky. And in my daughter’s case, I also made her autistic.

But it wasn’t because of something I did wrong. It wasn’t because of her shots, or her environment, or my parenting. It was because of the little chains of carbon inside all of our bloodstreams, the chromosomes my kids inherited from me and only me. It was because we have a very special family, and it’s full of brain problems and love.

And it’s perfect, exactly the way it is.