The early days...

After our scare things settled into a day to day routine. Occasionally, autism would pop into my mind and as early as 3 months would often comment that Munchkin wouldn't give eye contact. You could hold her in front of your face and she would look at your ear or the picture behind you regardless of how much you turned her towards you... Just as you thought she wouldn't look you in the eye, she would turn and look and you were ok again...

She was never a great feeder, and I put that down to the fact she had a slight tongue tie and I had to stop feeding after a couple of days and put her on formula. We then had a three week period of colic, reflux, sleeplessness, crying etc... I decided after trying every colic remedy known to mankind that I'd have to relactate (not an easy feat!) and try to feed her myself again. It cured the "colic" but we had a weird feeding system going as she hated the tummy to tummy feeding and after a while, would only feed if I lay on my side on the bed with her propped on pillows and I wasnt touching her. I had no idea of her sensory probs at this time just accepted that this was the way we had to feed. When I went back to work I got a friend to mind her and will never forget that she had to "drip feed" the milk to her...

She was developing on a par with all the other babies that were born to mums I met when I was pregnant so started to relax as I marked off things on my mental list....

eye contact (intermittant)... check
babbling (on reflection not great)... check
physical development... check

I was relieved as thought we were in the clear....