The Beginning of our Journey

Pawel and I had a beautiful baby girl named Emma in 2014. Emma was born two days after her due date with no complications. Emma always met her Developmental Milestones at all her checkups with the Public Health Nurse. She was and still is a child full of energy, kindness, love and joy.

After Emma was born I became very depressed and after six months I was diagnosed with Post-Natal depression. At the time I felt like a failure because I had Post-Natal depression. I had always dreamed of having my own children and being a great mom. When I finally had my first child I should have been happy. Instead I was so depressed I didn’t leave my house unless I had to go shopping or go for an appointment. I would spend every day at home in my pj’s. The more I did this the worse my depression got. I didn’t want to see my friends or family and I was trying to pretend I was fine when I wasn’t. I was put on antidepressants and I went to counseling. After a while the tablets and counseling started to help, I was starting to be more active and going out to see friends and family more. Then I day I woke up and I could breathe again. Before I had felt like I was barely keeping my head above the water each day and a bad day or bad news would drag me back under. Now I could breathe and stay above the water.

At her two year check up her speech was still delayed. She had less than ten words. The words she did her for were like mama and dada, still very baby like talk. Our Public Health Nurse wanted to send Emma to see a Speech and Language Therapist. In this meeting she asked me had Emma always a problem with making and holding eye contact with others. Before this meeting I didn’t think there was anything different with Emma other than her speech. I guess after this meeting I left thinking that something wasn’t adding up. I went home and Google searched lack of eye contact and no speech. It was then that I seen the word Autism. I didn’t know any child or person with it so I had nothing to compare it to. I just knew Emma. As I looked at other characteristics associated with Autism I started to see other things Emma did. These things were rocking backwards and forwards also called stimming, walking on her tippy toes and pulling up her sleeves.

The only person I could think about to ask was my sister. She had a sister in law that had a daughter with Autism. One day we were in the back garden of my parent’s house and I hadn’t told anyone yet that there might be something different about Emma. I asked my sister “Do you think Emma has Autism like your Sister in law’s daughter”? At first she said I don’t know, my sister was known for being honest but it had gotten her into trouble many times. I think she didn’t want to upset my feelings by telling me the truth. I told her I wouldn’t be upset with her as I wanted the truth. She looked at me and said “yes I think Emma has Autism”.

I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. I couldn’t catch my breath. My fears had now become one step closer to reality. Don’t get me wrong I love Emma with all my heart and nothing will ever change that. The thing is we didn’t plan for this. I didn’t think it was even a possibility until this week. I had no idea what Autism really was or how we were going to deal with it on a daily bases. I hadn’t even told Pawel yet that Emma might have autism because I wasn’t really sure she did until that day.

Next or Emma to see was the Medical Assessment Officer. She asked a list of questions to see how Emma scored in relation to Autism. Emma scored within the, at risk area and Emma was transferred over to Early Intervention.

When I got home that day I told Pawel I and the specialists Emma had seen believed that Emma had Autism. He didn’t want to hear it he thought there was no way Emma had Autism and that the specialists were just making it up. He couldn’t see the other characteristics Emma had that were linked to Autism. He thought that if Emma started to speak tomorrow that the specialists would say that she fine. I asked him to come to all her meetings with the multidisciplinary team for her assessment. He agreed to come but told me he still didn’t believe them. He was in denial, like I had been for months.

If I’m honest with myself I knew something was different with Emma way before she turned two. She never played with kids unless it was one on one. In large groups of children she was the child at the back, looking in the opposite direction and playing by herself. I never realized why she did that but she was always happier doing it so why make her join in. She would pull up her sleeves and her trousers no matter the weather. If I tried to pull the down because it was raining she would become upset and pull them back up. She spent most of her time on her tippy toes. These were all things that I thought were cute until I added them all together with her lack of speech.

We started our journey with a diagnoses next. I will go into talk about this in the next post. In my book coming out in 2021 called Family Life and Autism I go into a lot more detail about the topics in my posts. If you want to contact me about anything I mentioned in the post please email me in the email at the end of each post. I am not a professional, these are my experiences.

Thank you all for taking the time to read my post.

autisticmagicwithemma@outlook.ie