Taking the Scenic Route

Zane has shown some neat new behaviors lately…asking questions like “what are you doing?” and “where is ____?”, and playing that game with a cousin at the family gathering. However, he has also started doing some super annoying vocal tics. He has a new throat clearing thing, and a voice dipping thing. Really annoying and we haven’t figured out what triggers either of them yet.

And, although it seems humanly impossible for his poops to get any worse, they somehow have managed to knock it up another notch in bad. Yuck. And very frequent yuck, I might add. And rash. *sigh*

On a similar note, I was wondering if, in fact, he started having autistic symptoms on his first birthday (or there abouts) because I remember that is the first time he got really sick and I think he had an ear infection. I was thinking that the symptoms didn’t really change after that, but I really wasn’t sure. I know they were definitely there later, and I remembered him as a baby being interactive, but I couldn’t remember when it changed.

It wasn’t his first birthday. We had a lot of problems getting him to look at the camera already, before he was sick, before his birthday. I went back, skipping a month here and there, and there was little change until I hit August. There was some difficulty getting him to look at the camera, but there were more engaged shots mixed in. As I went back, there were more and more shots of him being engaged. Then I caught a series of shot that happened over the summer. He had a really, REALLY bad yeasty diaper rash and we had him naked, outside in the sunshine out on my Grandparent’s home place (rural farm). Lots of cute chubby naked baby pictures. And that rash. And I kept looking back through time and there were far more “engaged” pictures than where we are working to get his attention. Almost everything shows a typical development before that.

That damn rash. Was that it? Why didn’t I notice the difference? I know that at 5mo he responded to his name. When did that stop? I didn’t even notice it. I know, in real life, it was stretched out over time, and it was at an enormously stressful time in our lives. We had just been laid off, and the reason we were at my grandparent’s house over the summer was because we were house-sitting/renting over the summer after grandpa’s death while they were getting the farm ready for the farm sale in the fall. Zach started back to school that summer, taking an English class. We were so poor that we were scared of not having food and started on food stamps. Months before everything had finally looked like we were on our way…nice apartment, new baby, good job. And then a layoff blew everything into bits. Maybe even more than we realized at the time.

What if I had noticed. Would things be different? I know it doesn’t matter now, and we can only start from where we are. And I know that Zane was destined to be on the spectrum (more chance than not, given his genetics), but would he be as severe if not for that? Was it the rash, or was the rash caused by starting on solids? It was within weeks of starting on solids. (we have pictures of that too…I could actually figure out the dates if I wanted to).

A lesson in why you should never look back. I can’t change it. I can only be haunted by it at this point.