I wish I had known I was Autistic

I went into pregnancy and parenthood completely unaware that I was Autistic. I experienced it the same way I had experienced all other things in life up until that point - living in what felt like a parallel universe to everyone else. They were running one operating system; I was running another. Every time I tried and failed to mold and change myself to be like everyone else, little by little my belief in myself and my experience was whittled away.

Pre kids, I had shrunk my world to be very small and very controllable. So, for me, early parenthood was inherently challenging because it is by nature uncontrollable. The medical system, however, loves to measure and control all aspects of early childhood within ranges of what is ‘normal’. There are milestones. So. Many. Milestones. Your baby is expected to do x, y, z by a certain age – whether it’s sleep related, motor skills or eating. If they don’t, it’s a problem. They’re a problem. You’re a problem.

I was diagnosed with perinatal depression and anxiety (PNDA), mainly because of the anxiety I experienced as a result of all of these ‘shoulds’ and expectations. No matter what or how I did things, we rarely met those early milestones.

There again, in early parenthood just as before, I was made to feel like I was ‘broken’. By medical professionals, by online ‘baby sleep consultants’, by peers who were (I assume) too ashamed to admit they were actually struggling with similar things.

I wish the yardstick for ‘what is normal’ during the postpartum period, early parenthood and early childhood was more in line with the wide and varied spectrum of neurodiversity that we actually have as humans. I wish I had known that there was nothing wrong with me or my baby.

More than anything, I wish I had known I was autistic. I’d like to think I could have found a neurodivergent mothers’ group, somewhere I was made to feel like I belonged and where my challenges weren’t pathologised into an illness or something to be pitied.

Because I’ll tell you what, it’s near impossible to mask with an unpredictable baby in tow. Perhaps my first born was trying to tell me something even back then, somehow knowing his own neurodivergence would soon uncover his mothers’.

*Name has been changed.