Our daughter Jaelyn was born a perfect baby in April 2004. The prettiest blue eyes, the perfect formed little body, my wife and I did everything right. We went to all doctor appointments; we changed our diet as well as our lifestyle while she was being formed. When she came screaming into this world, my eyes moistened my love was instant.
My wife and I discussed breastfeeding, something that we had not done for our son 8 years previous, but now the option was there. And like with everything my wife does, once it was decided she went all out, breastfeeding exclusively for the first 6 months of Jaelyn's life. Never did we see any sign of a problem with our daughter. At 10 months old she was walking, at 12 months old she was waving bye-bye, and expressing herself through a series of giggles, smiles, and hugs. It didn't change overnight, it felt like it did, but it couldn't have. Somewhere in the months surrounding the first year things changed, she grew on the outside, but she shrunk on the inside.
It was heart wrenching to watch it happen and its heart wrenching to remember it happening, but my angel, my little girl was slipping out of this world into her own. I brought it up numerous times at her doctor's office, her well meaning, if uninformed doctor said it's a common experience for a child to act as she does. Yes I beat myself up over not pushing for a second opinion for those few months but finally facing reality we had too. The second doctor did the CHAT test and yes he informed us, something was going on. He set up an appointment in a local Children's Hospital for us. Two months later, when she was 18 months old, we heard the news at the hospital, that I knew deep down already, she had PDD. "You're lucky, you caught it early in her" we where told, "With early intervention she has a better chance than some other's whose parents refuse to face it until the child is 4-5 years old" it doesn't feel like luck I thought, it's killing me.
When we returned home I started calling to set up therapy for our daughter. I started getting serious on the research, of both the proven and the unproven, though all safe methods of autism treatment. When therapy began twice a week for our daughter I started her on probiotics, within a month she was showing slight improvements, not swinging side to side as much, not mouthing everything she touched. Not perfect but most certainly improvements.
It's been about 8 months worth of therapy our daughter still has no means of communicating effectively as sign language is still stuck on her first word (more) though she does the signal sometimes, it's rarely for "more" it's just her normal hand/arm movements. But that's not saying she isn't improving, she is, greatly. She has less repetitive behaviors and more concentrating. She will color for minutes at a time, she will sleep through the night, she started minimal eye contact and most amazing to me, she has started giving kisses.
While it's easy to see she is still in her own "world" she is slowly slipping into our world. It's a long, slow, and personal process, it is happening. I resigned myself in the earliest stages to her autism, I also realized then as I do now that she is happy, she is very happy. So no matter how much progress she makes, or doesn't make, my purpose as her dad is not to "cure" her but to ensure she stay's happy.
Our daughter is 2 ½ years old, while she may never be considered normal, she is better than normal she is unique.
L. Dill
