Pregnant with AS-- Need advice

Post Reply New Topic

i have AS and have had 2 children.
you seriously need not worry about this
i don't bond easily, i'm not sure of my feelings for anyone, i "sort of care"about people ( lol) but my children?
i wouldn't even call it bonding. They are even more important to me than i am to myself. when my son was born i breastfed and co-slept with him until he stopped needing night feeds at 4 weeks old. Do you know how i knew he didn't need feeding at night anymore? one night we were facing each other and he crawled to take my breast ( like little puppies do ) and i let him draw a few sips, until i felt annoyed and half asleep turned my back to him. he fell asleep again. the next night i put him in his crib: he slept through the night.
there is no thinking involved in taking care of a baby, it's very instinctive and i had that instinct stronger than any NT woman i know, always their nose in books such as "how bad is it to not breastfeed, "etc. i could feel everything he felt. if he cried i felt like crying. if a motorbike passed us in the street i felt enraged because i knew how bad he jumped when that hapened, and even though i had stopped being freaked out by motorbikes long before teenage years, there i was jumping myself again.
that might be what they call empathy, and there's no doubt you will be surprised at the feeling.
that was my first child, and i guess that's the reason why i had it so bad, because it didn't happen with my daughter. i knew what she needed and i loved her just as much, but i didn't feel all she felt. I think there is a possibility that , because she is NT, her feelings were tamer, and consequently mine too.
trust yourself, and don't overthink this one: we are animals, mammals are designed to bond with their babies. and what helps is that we make the cutest babies in the animal realm

The maternal instinct is an INCREDICABLY strong thing. Stronger than love I have felt for any opther family or boyfriend I have or ever will have . And it's natural - we are animals after all. Something to do with hormones.

I don't really know where to start. I have an 11 year old PDD/AS son, who is wonderful.

I had an awful time. I didn't bond for ages, when I say ages I mean that I only rarely felt in any way connected with the strange alien creature that was my son, until he was probably three or even four years old. There were moments when I felt close to him, when I really enjoyed him as a person, but most of the time, especially the first two and a half years, he seemed like a troublesome exhausting invasive threatening stranger.

It was a homebirth ( drug-free and straightforward, the last straightforward bit of motherhood really! :lol ) ; I breastfed, ( which I only discovered afterwards may have contributed to my depression, something to do with hormones and brain chemicals ), for a total of 21 months, though he started eating other stuff a lot earlier ( almond and fruit puree at 4 months, carrot puree at same time but he threw it up, then little bits of things from about 8 months onwards ).

I was unconsciously influenced, even "driven", by the clock-feeding that I had experienced as a child, and thought that he couldn't possibly want to feed more often than every three or four hours during the day, ( mistakenly "reading" his cries at other times as variously discomfort, thirst for water, constipation, etc ), and so of course he woke me up every three hours at night, when I would immediately breastfeed rather than try to sort anything else out, and suffered the most appalling sleep-deprivation as a result, ( it always takes me ages to fall asleep again after abrupt wakenings ).

For the first two months or more I truly wanted to have him adopted it was so totally nightmarish. Then I spent the next two and a half years wishing/wanting/dreaming of running away and leaving him, ( with his father ), at least once a week and often every day.

From a year onwards he woke at least twice often three times a night with stomach and intestinal inflammation/pain, but the nice kind normal NT women at the awfully polite toddlers group I went to a few times said that was normal. It turned out to be celiac disease, ( and/or fructose malabsorption, I'm now wondering ), we worked out when he was two, after a year of sleepless nights and exploded nappies and s**t everywhere.

And breastfeeding felt very odd, not at all pleasant or spontaneous or natural until he was at least 4 months old, when I suddenly "got it", understood his "need", and felt "loving" feeding him, but then had meltdowns on a regular basis because he would fall asleep happily in my arms after feeding, and I would then put him down in his cot, hoping for a little, just a little, a tiny bit, of time to myself free of this thing, and he would wake up the instant his head touched the pillow, and I have been furious with him, as a result of that and the exploded nappies and and and, and I have chucked him down onto ( soft ) chairs, into his bed, "bitten" ( not so as to cut, but it must have hurt ), his knees, hit him, and roared and growled and screamed at him.

I know that this is all horrible, I do not think lightly of this. When he turned two and a half I went gluten-free again, for his and my sake, and my extreme irritation, anger, hysteria, panic/fear, worst depression, etc quickly disappeared.

In the early months when I begged his father to let us put him up for adoption, he was so horrified that he would not even talk about it. I needed to talk, needed someone to hear what I was feeling and thinking, and had no one, ( no one that is apart from the "earth-mother-type" leader of the local breastfeeding association who ignored my initial "self-diagnosis" of post-natal depression, saying that I just needed a big hug, :bleh, and then later on reported me to the Maternal and Infant Protection Unit for mental instability, behind my back, so that I had inspectors coming round to the house over the next six months checking that everything was ok/normal ).

The first night after my son was born I watched TV with his father, my one-day-old baby son in another room, silent, I thought sleeping, but when I went to the toilet and looked in on him he was lying there in his cot his eyes wide open staring at the ceiling, all alone, and I registered the aloneness and the sadness of it and yet did not pick him up, felt no urge to touch or caress him or speak to him. I left him alone, as I generally do people when they seem unhappy because that is usually what I want when unhappy. I remember thinking that he reminded me of ET.

He had pretty bad jaundice, for the first 8/9 days or so, and looked so ill, as if he was going to die of typhoid or something, that I felt totally terrified, almost sick looking at him. My peritonal cut etc also took 10 weeks to heal, and it was the worst injury that I have ever had in my life. Looking at and changing the dressings on the half-healed flesh frightened me.

When I watched David Lynch's film "Eraserhead" a few years later I cried with recognition about that wailing, whining, whimpering, baby-thing wrapped up in swaddling-bandages. That is what my baby seemed like to me, always there, never stopping needing me.

And I cried my eyes out watching the film "The Hours", the scenes with Julianne Moore as the 50's housewife, who eventually abandons her new baby and her older child to run away for ever, I so totally understood her struggle to do "mummy-stuff".

I love him now. I started to love him when he started being able to speak ( which he did very late, from age 4 ), or at least explicitly gesture his needs, ( from about two and a half ); until then he was just a terrifying incomprehensible and complicated animal.

I never felt the least urge to talk to him, to babble, to interact with him, pick him up, hold him, touch him, before then. Though I do now, and have done since he was about four.

But he is wonderful now, has survived my awful mothering amazingly well, is a funny, intelligent enterprising, persistent, happy person.

What I wish I had known:

I wish I had known that a baby might well want to suckle every hour or even more often, ( and that doing so they may not have to feed at night ).

I wish I had been able to "see" that he was a person right from the start, and that I had been able to understand what his body movements meant, his little sounds, his cries, etc.

I wish I had known that he was celiac straightaway/soon after birth ( been screened automatically say ), so as to have avoided that awful second year of broken nights.

I wish that I had had more help in the first couple of months, with cooking, cleaning, babysitting, ( I was always alone with him, father on the road, in hotels etc, for 4-5 days a week, on client visits ).

I wish that I had been on a gf diet from the start.
.

DS had colic, which I'd seen before in other babies, so I understood it: I, too, had to cut out all dairy from my diet or face the consequences. If anyone finds themselves breastfeeding (and this is something that is strangely unnatural in the whole natural process, took me and DS a while to figure out, too) with a baby who screams in distress for hours and who can't burp, start looking into your diet. I wound up avoiding dairy, beans, tomatoes, onions, cruciferous vegetables...I don't have any real evidence other than that when I switched to almond milk things did get better, and once he started solid foods things improved considerably, but if you take vitamins a temporarily restrictive diet isn't a bad idea (gluten never occurred to me and hasn't been an issue now that he's grown, where we still have some dairy intolerance.) This is something to consider if you bottle-feed as well: allergy-free formulas are REALLY expensive, and not all of them work.

It's heartbreaking to hear your story, ouinon - but I think one big lesson learned is, again, GET HELP. There is nothing wrong with a new mother asking for help; there are people trained to help you understand your baby if that is a problem, and to help you deal with the round-the-clock aspect of the first month or so. If somebody's giving you a baby shower, ask that instead of presents, they all chip in for a doula or home aide.

Most of all, find someone who won't make you feel bad by asking well-meaning but stupid questions about bonding, or whether or not your baby is "good." (They are ALL good.)

When my sons were infants I felt frustrated and ashamed because this grand instinctive knowing seemed to be absent. I had no idea how to "read" my babies, and taking care of them was very much an intellectual rather than instinctive matter. I needed to read the books (and I read a library full! Probably gave myself a masters in early childhood development!), and to have a mental checklist to run through when they were crying so I could play detective and figure out what they needed. I would hear other moms talk about recognizing a "hungry cry" or a "cry of discomfort" and I felt baffled (and ashamed). Just like I have trouble differentiating tone of voice and mood in the adult people around me, I could not differentiate between types of cry. I just don't seem to have those auditory pathways in my brain, and that didn't just magically change because I gave birth. However, over time I became incredibly tuned in to what my children need and who they are as people, and I think I have my Aspieness to thank for that, because I had complete and utter single-minded determination to become a good mom.

I guess my point is that the experience of motherhood is different for us all, and it does not come easily or instinctively to everyone, but quite often has to be learned like anything else. Also that you will take who you are with you when you become a mom. There isn't some magical transformation into a completely different person, although there is a great deal of growth and change. For example I have become more patient and generous than I ever thought possible, but I still struggle with disorganization and sensory issues. I get touched out. I get overly anxious about things. I struggle to help them socially, when social stuff is a weak point for me too. So I am myself, flaws and all, but I am still a very, very good mom.

Your baby doesn't need you to be perfect. You may never feel some magical, mythical bond while the baby is still in utero. You may absolutely hate breastfeeding, because of your sensory issues. BUT if you just keep trying to do your best for your child every single day, you will be a GREAT mom!

Last edited by annotated_alice on 02 Dec 2010, 9:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

Hiya - It sounds like you had an awful time and I feel for you, but I just thought I'd correct you about the breastfeeding hormones contributing to the depression - as studies have shown that breast feeding actually reduces incidences of post natel/partum depression.

Breastfeeding was definitely a massively bonding experience for me, and I also breast fed for a very long time , but in some non western countries they breastfeed for years with no ill affects on their health! So unless you were severely underweight or lacking in vitamins etc. I think it unlikely that breastfeeding had anything physiologically to do with your depression? Anyone can suffer from post natal/partum depression though, AS/ NT or otherwise.

Although my experience was in no way as bad as Ouinon's (it was really only the first 6-9 mos that were really excruciating, and I had twins), the help thing is HUGE. I was too scared to ask for help. I thought that I would be judged as a bad mother, meanwhile my husband was also away on business 4 nights a week, and we had no family anywhere near. Get as much help as you can muster, and do not let all the gaggy, judgmental "I just put my baby in a sling and everything has been oh so easy and delightful from day 1, so what's wrong with you?" types make you feel in any way inferior. Help, rest and breaks are very good things.

wait, i re-read all this and my post and i wanted to point this out: I am not saying that it WILL come naturally for you, and that if it doesn't , then something must be wrong. as i said, i didn't have the same experience with my daughter, and although i find reasons for it, it might also be related to ptsd, since the birth was a nightmare.
what i meant to say, was that it is not because you are AS that you CAN'T bond with your baby, it can happen just like for every other mother. like every other mother, you may also experience post natal depression, and all that kind of things, but you are not especially doomed because of your AS, that's all i wanted to tell the OP, because that's the worry i had read in her post so i adressed it.

I didn't know why then, but I do now!! ! :lol ...

I just realised at the time, ( when my son was about 18 months old ), that it applied to me on reading an article in a Leche League magazine ( in the toilet at the Leche-League group leader earth-mother-type's house! :lol ) about breastfeeding causing depression in a significant minority of mothers because of some brain chemicals ... ... ...

I'm probably one of the third ( 36.7% ) of people on the autism spectrum with unusually permeable intestines, ( compared to 4.8% of general population, according to large and recent study ), which means that when I eat glutenous grains and casein/dairy my brain is exposed to unusually large amounts of food opioid peptides, and ( constant/chronic exposure to ) opioids/opiates ( over decades in my case! ), have a devastating impact on dopamine pathways, ( one's ability to handle current stress/strain/effort/hard-work etc in order to achieve a distant/future goal; one's capacity for planning or even caring about long-term goals, etc, etc, etc, as I've been posting recently on a couple of other threads here :lol ), and ... breastfeeding suppresses dopamine production.

Apparently "Suckling suppresses prolactin-inhibitor-factor. PIF is dopamine based or mediated, and it stimulates the release of further dopamine and inhibits lactation. ... Breastfeeding/nipple stimulation suppresses both PIF and dopamine production".

Breastfeeding was like the last straw on the exhausted camel's back of my dopamine system, ( probably why the depression started to lift about 6 months after I stopped breastfeeding, and why I was then able to manage to go gf, and why going glutenous-opioid-free, when my son was three, had such a dramatic effect on my mental health ), breastfeeding was, strangely and sadly and ironically, ( because of how it is supposed to be so good for mother and baby, and I so believed that ), the last thing that I needed to be doing, it wrecked me even more than the loss of sleep etc ( and may, who knows, have triggered my son's celiac disease too, apparently, by introducing my gliadin-antibodies to his body ).
.

Last edited by ouinon on 02 Dec 2010, 12:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This gives me hope!

My mom is going to stay with me for a while after i give birth so that she can show me all that she can possibly show me....

I am kind of stubborn "i'll do it myself" kind of person...I will be aware of that... if i need help, i will ask for it.

xxxxx

Last edited by Mutate on 03 Dec 2010, 7:23 am, edited 1 time in total.

i was not yet diagnosed with ASD when i had my daughter, so i didn't worry about bonding in any way specifically related to my disorder... but just as a parent i worried. i didn't want to have children ever, so when faced with a pregnancy, the situation was quite stressful and uncertain.

we did bond. i chose to have a home birth with a midwife, which helped me with my fears and kept me comfortable. i also chose to breastfeed for as long as i could (less than 6 months for most feedings as i had to return to work). i did some radical things to avoid post-partum depression, and in the end returning to work helped to keep me sane.

i really enjoyed being pregnant. as soon as my daughter was born, i realized that i would never be that physically close to another human being again, and it made me quite sad. being pregnant was like a constant hug and a comfort to me.

you want to have experienced post partum depression before being able to comment on this one. I'm no moderator, but please, don't attack someone for something you don't understand.

xxxxxx

Last edited by Mutate on 03 Dec 2010, 7:23 am, edited 1 time in total.

please don't attack people here. nobody said that they don't care about their children.

i'm advising you to stop this provocative behaviour.