AS AN AUTISTIC PERSON, WERE YOU BORN PREMATURE?

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I was born right on time, according to my parents.

oh really? whats the standard practice in the netherlands?

Nope. Actually I was born two weeks later than the expected date, and it was HARD, I barely made it since my (Aspie) mom wasn't doing anything to push me out and neither was I. They had to extract me with some kind of tool that allows you to grab the baby from the head and carry it out pretty scary image (this is no longer in use in Italy since it was obviously dangerous). And when I came out...nothing, no crying, no shouting, looked like dead..I guess I already knew what was expecting me

Nope, I was born on time.

They had to use forceps on me too.

They say this causes a major ambivalence in social relationships. People born this way tend to seek help from other people just to refuse it in order to demonstrate they "can do it" on their own. It's also correlated with low tolerance/aversion of physical contact. Forceps born are also afraid of being controlled by other people and so they tend to cut social bonds.

All the above apply to me.

I was born 23 days late, and even then they had to stop my mother's labor and do a C-section.

I had all the classic signs of autism from day one and continued throughout my entire life, so whatever theories someone has there means very little to me.

I was three weeks late and came into the world happy and pink. All 5 of my kids were also born full term with no problems...I have AS and I have two kids with AS and one who is diagnosed Autistic.

I was 3 weeks late.

A five-year special interest in pregnancy, birth, and infancy, with a focus on prematurity and multiple births. When you read enough baby books meant to reassure new parents of things like "a funny-shaped head is normal for a newborn", you get lots of mentions of lanugo, which is more common in preemies but can occur in healthy full-term births.

Last edited by Callista on 07 Sep 2008, 9:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i was two months early, but there may have been a twin...they had another heartbeat until four and a half months...but the doctor says it "could have been an echo". that might have been just to keep from freaking out my mother. i was a total accident, parents were using TWO kinds of birth control because mother almost died having my brother, and my brother was actually born dead. (full-term in his case, just an anesthesia problem) mother took something to prevent miscarriage when she got pregnant with me, and her body didn't seem to want me...bad pregnancy. i like to say i was a colorful infant: blue baby, jaundiced (yellow), and had roseola. i was also screwy from the start...never slept (well, i think mother exaggerates with NEVER) until they put me on pheno at 4 months, cried but didn't want to be held-except by my great-grandmother, but she scared my mother because apparently she held me like i was a sack of potatoes. i probably didn't want to be held as closely as other people were trying to hold me?

the point here may not be the oxygen-deprivation common to premature births, but that premature births are often but not always due to a pregnancy that is not progressing well. there are any number of reasons for this, but whatever the reason the stress hormones associated with this and any other imbalances might be a factor. my full-term brother, while he has no diagnosis, thinks so much like me we freak people out when we're in the same room. so heredity might be a factor, and tim might be less affected because the pregnancy itself wasn't as stressful...? just a thought.

Where is the option for no???

In most cases, the baby hormonally determines when it will be born (in cases of multiples or too much amniotic fluid, that might not be the case, but usually it is... big theory right now is that it's a change in placental hormones that trigger labor). So it could be that the prematurity doesn't cause autism at all, but that autism causes prematurity, because of some hormonal difference.

When you say there was a heartbeat that might have been an echo, you are probably talking about a case of vanishing twin syndrome. Many people start out as twins and never know it. One twin dies very early, and is re-absorbed into the mother's body, leaving behind nothing at all (if it happens earlier), or else it gets crushed against the uterus wall and partly re-absorbed... you can really only tell by x-ray (which shows bone remnants) that it was ever a fetus at all.

Last edited by Callista on 07 Sep 2008, 9:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The only way that I could be considered 'premature' is if you count the number of months between my parent's wedding day and my birthday. It was something less than 9 months, even though I was 'full term'.