Aspies For Freedom

I can't exactly say either... I've only recently become willing to seriously consider the possibility. In the past I've pretty much only done a pretty decent job of coming up with a million reasons why my differences are NOT due to anything on the autistic spectrum. I guess Occam's razor is finally catching up with me.

My (now 20yo) brother was diagnosed with PDD-NOS about 7 years ago and was causing a lot of trouble (mainly at school). I didn't want to be like him, my parents didn't want me to be like him either, and the two of us are different enough to make denial possible. I read part of a book about Asperger's and just focussed on the things that weren't me and came up with excuses for the things that were me. When I was 19 an Aspie on a mailing list I was on diagnosed me as having Asperger's shadow which I vehemently denied (okay, I ended up saying that I perhaps had a tiny tiny bit of that but that she was mostly wrong). Mind ya, she didn't know about a bunch of Aspie traits that I have... She also placed my husband (whom I hadn't met irl yet at that point in time) on the spectrum and he was more open to that but didn't do much with it. But then after staying with my parents and brother for a month this last winter he decided he was quite similar to my brother and to do some more reading to figure this all out and he ended up deciding that he has Asperger's, to which I (with my nice pregnant mood swings) responded that he needed to shut up about the topic and that he should unbecome an Aspie or I'd divorce him. I apologised about 15 minutes later but you get the idea. Anyway, he's been telling me that he thinks I have it too (although he's nice... he told his Aspie friends that I'm an Aspie with empathy... lol... he scores like 6-9 (iirc) on the EQ test whereas I score like 20-22), and someone else on another mailing list I was on has also told me that I'm probably an Aspie, and I guess I'm finally beginning to accept my verdict. <grin> I don't like paradigm shifts though, so this has been yet another stress recently...

Okay, enough rambling.

Can't do the epidural thing as that'd require me to do a hospital birth which I really don't want to...  when I imagine a hospital birth I imagine overload, doctors not listening to me and then finally drugging me so that I'll be a complacent patient. Not doing that if I can avoid it. Home birth sounds about infinitely better to me, and is cheaper as well.

I'm in the fortunate (ahem) situation that I don't have to worry much about people visiting me and the baby. My husband and I don't have any friends around here, nor any family, so there's no one to come bother us. My mom is coming over after the baby is born, and so are my inlaws, but that's it. My mil is a *** though, but luckily my husband thinks the same thing (dislikes her more than I do), so he's quite willing to kick her out when she's too much of a pain in the ***.

I'm more worried about the toddler years than about the actual birth or the newborn.

LOL... And to think I got flamed (by an Aspie) a few months ago because I referred to my baby as 'it' because we didn't know yet at the time.

Anyway, 'it' is a boy. I asked the ultrasound tech how certain she was and she was really certain and explained in detail why she was so certain, so we shouldn't have a "oops, I mistook the cord for the penis" situation that you sometimes hear about. We've named him Gene.

I know toddlers aren't so bad for the most part, it's the other part I worry about though. Also, some kids are easier than others. Anyway, I'm not particularly worried about it yet, just that the thought scares me more than a baby... babies are comparatively easy I think. I supposedly was an easy baby and an easy toddler, so let's hope the baby takes after me.

Prenatal Yoga... Yeah, I've thought a bit about stuff like that, but I don't have much of an opportunity for a class, and trying to understand instructions like that from a book is not something I'm good at (basically, it's something I'm bad at, get all stressed out by). DVD would be the best option, but my laptop overheated and caught on fire and hence needs a cable replaced before it might perhaps work again. I've been pretty good about going on walks and such though and doing the occasional meditation. I should try to do the meditation thing more often, thanks for reminding me.

Ya know, I don't really care if they read by age three or age six. I know a lot of parents care a lot about that kind of stuff but I just don't... I didn't learn to read until I was six but then when I learned to read I spent hours a day reading. Not that I'd mind if they learned at age three, just that it's not a goal or anything.

I hated school... can't imagine putting my kids through that. At least homeschooling is legal and fairly common around here, unlike where I'm from (where it's legal for religious reasons only and nobody even knows that it's legal). There's like a million reasons why I'd rather homeschool my kids than send them to school, but that probably belongs more in the education forum than in a pregnancy thread.

I started talking before I was 9 months old, so considering I'm a preemie that'd be at 8 months... Most stuff I've read about sign language says babies can learn it from 8 months onwards... It's still an interesting idea though and there's no way of telling whether our son will be an early or a late talker. I feel kinda weird saying this, but when my husband and I talk to each other we often repeat words... We try not to do this in public because it's weird, but we do it a lot at home. We probably say "love-love" more often than "I love you", I often call him dave-dave and he often calls me Nam-Nam ('nam' being the second syllable of my nickname), we say stuff like "din-din's (=dinner) ready", "hug-hug" and "cuddle-cuddle" etc... So when I want to be cuddled it might go like this: me: "Cuddle-cuddle?" dave: "Cuddle-cuddle." me (enthousiastic): "Cuddle-cuddle!" dave (enthousiastic): "Cuddle-cuddle!". I don't have a clue why we do this but who knows, it might help with the baby's language development. <grin>

That's a good idea.

Ziyaret, are you male or female and how old are you? My husband said until about a year (and a half?) ago that he absolutely didn't want a son... turns out he was afraid of having a normal son. His biggest fear is having to go to baseball games with his kid... lol. Anyway, then it finally dawned upon him that considering that I'm going to be the baby's mother and he's going to be the baby's father, the odds of the baby being *normal* are exceedingly slim...

I'm going to say that our son is at a pretty high 'risk' of being an aspie (my brother officially has PDD-NOS, and both my husband and I seem to be somewhere on the spectrum, and they say it's mostly a genetic condition), but I can't say for sure. NTs aren't so bad if you raise them properly though.

I learned to walk somewhere between 11 and 12 months old, so at a fairly normal time... if you consider the preemie part slightly early, but not very. I learned to walk while we were on vacation, so when we got home and my parents tried putting me in a playpen I refused. Mwuhahaha. I don't remember how old I supposedly was when I talked in sentences. I do remember that my mom says that it was while I was still in the crib, but who knows what that means. I think my most amazing early childhood feat was drawing a six drawing series depicting the birth of my brother when I was almost 2.5yo... The drawings are at about a 6yo skill level... I'm not good at drawing anymore, when I started kindergarten I tried to conform and when it came to drawing did a pretty decent job of conforming...