Welcome To Our World!! Getting a diagnosis: Part 1

I am so excited about this new blog! I will be posting lots of great information about Autism. Most importantly, I will be sharing our experiences with Autism. It will be real. It may get ugly sometimes as I will be sharing not only good experiences but the not-so-good experiences too. ;)

I'd like to first share our story of getting a diagnosis and how it all happened...

Aside from Jax's rough start as a newborn, he developed right on target (or even ahead on some things) as a baby. He was saying around 40+ words when he turned 12 months old. It wasn't until he turned two that we started noticing signs that Jax may be falling behind. It was like he stopped progressing. The lack of progress just happened to be right after he received a bunch of immunizations all at once. Yeah, tough subject, I know...but this is what we saw happen with our own eyes.

At Jax's 2 year well child checkup, I expressed my concerns to our pediatrician. He told me Jax was doing just fine and was even ahead on speech. That kind of baffled me because I was around my nephew a lot at the time (who was the same age as Jax) and he was talking so much more. I tried not to compare, since all kids are different, but the gap just seemed to be getting bigger and bigger. After the appointment, we came home and I just wasn't feeling content at all. My mommy instinct was screaming at me that something just wasn't right. I then called the pediatrician to speak with him about it all again. He told me several times that Jax was just fine and was developing perfectly well and not to worry about it. I decided I should just trust him since he should know what he is talking about. He had been a pediatrician for 40+ years, after all.

Life went on...

When Jax was about to turn 3 years old, we continued to see a bigger and bigger gap between Jax and his peers. We decided it was time to have him evaluated. We went through the school system for his evaluation. It was tough. When all was said and done, we received the results which stated that Jax had severe developmental delays, in all areas. We knew he was behind but seeing the severity of it on paper was a big slap in the face. 

How could this happen?! What did we do wrong? What could we have done differently?

I was sad. Really sad. Part of me was happy because we could finally start getting him the help he needed...but the other part of me was so sad, and angry, and hurt. It just didn't seem fair. Why did OUR little boy have to go through this? 

See next post for part 2 of getting a diagnosis of Autism..