Background and Diagnosis

We suspected for a long time that something was different about Galen. When he was a baby, he was hitting the developmental milestones, but he never really seemed "normal" to me. Around the time we found out we were pregnant with Flint, he seemed to get less "normal" and I started watching his behaviors even closer. The pediatrician didn't think anything was wrong with him at his 15 month check up, but at the 18 month check up, I insisted that I wanted him tested for Autism (the check list indicated a couple of "Autism signs", but the pediatrician still wasn't concerned).

She went ahead and printed out the paperwork for a referral since I insisted and we filled it out. It finally got through to Texas Children's Autism Clinic the week before Flint was born (Sept 2014; Galen was 21 months when Flint arrived). He continued to hit some milestones, but didn't seem to be developing "normally" still. Then it seemed like he'd forgotten some of the stuff he'd learned (he'd done that at 13 months as well, except that he then proved he still knew it when I started to tell someone my concerns).
We got on the 3-5 month waiting list and finally got seen in April 2015, which was actually 6 1/2 months after getting on the waiting list. He was first seen on March 30, 2015. After a 3 hour evaluation, we had a 2 week wait to find out the results.

On April 13, 2015, Galen was officially diagnosed as Autistic with other developmental issues. His highest skills are of an 18 month old and his lowest are of a 6 month old, and he's 28 months old currently. These are what were seen during testing and gathered from a questionnaire I filled out. I honestly think he might actually be farther than that, but testing was only one day and based on our own experiences. He has been showing signs of development that the dr actually said made no sense based on his testing, he shouldn't be able to do it (sorting blocks by colors).

We were given a ton of referrals for Galen to get help with speech, motor skills, and other things. Yesterday I spent the day looking over the referral stuff and attempting to process the diagnosis. It was entirely expected, but it still gives me a "now what?" feeling looking at everything he will need help with. Today I spent the day reading the "What to do in the first 100 days after diagnosis" stuff we were given. I haven't finished it (it's not that long, honestly, but my dyslexia makes reading difficult). The dr was worried we were going to have a lot of problems understanding what she was telling us, but thankfully with my background in Psychology, I understood the vast majority of what she was saying to us.

Some of the differences we noticed as a baby are:
he smiled, but infrequently
didn't really respond to his name
seemed totally in his own world all the time
didn't really enjoy toys
wasn't really interested in pointing at stuff
couldn't be interested (at all) at house Christmas lights
incredibly dependent (wouldn't sleep in a crib or without me 75% of the time)
wouldn't sleep alone, even by 18 months
learned many words and spoke them, then seemed to forget them all
wouldn't wave bye bye, clap hands (occasionally, not generally)
hasn't learned high fives
wouldn't pretend play

Once Flint was born:
he didn't want anything to do with her
wouldn't hold her or feed her
pushes her away when she tries to play with him

The BIGGEST sign (to me) was that Galen puts EVERYTHING in his mouth. Bottle cap lids, metal, pencils, crayons, pens, paper; he doesn't distinguish between things. It tends to mean he's hungry or that he's tired and wants his pacifier.

In total, I feel a sense of relief for being right (that something is unusual about Galen's behavior) and a sense of scaredness for what the future will hold with all these appointments with new people and stuff like that that we have to do now.