Maybe there are two kinds of autism...

I wonder if there is maybe more than one type of autism spectrum disorder.  Maybe there is an autistic like affect that is triggered by vaccinnes, dietary deficiencies and whatever else other theory is out there.  I only wonder about this because I am absolutely positive that my son was born with a brain that is different.  Here is my story... I had a relatively normal pregnancy with my son, I had high blood pressure with all of my babies so that didn't seem to abnormal for me.  Mason was born on a snowy day in January after a long labor - he came out sunny side up and barely made a sound.  He had white fuzz on top of his head and dimples in his cheeks.  He was a beautiful baby (I think all mothers say that).  Mason was a very quiet baby, he never cried, he slept very little and the most he ever ate at one time was about two oz.  He was breastfed until he was three months when he cut his first teeth...we switched to bottle feeding only try to achieve a few hours of sleep, in hopes that formula feeding would encourage such a thing.  It didn't work.  At three months - Mason slept for a maximum of 6 hours a day, he never drank more than 20 oz of formula on any given day.  He was still growing and thriving and the pediatrician said that all of his levels were fine and he was doing well.  At six months he sat on his own, started to move around the floor pulling himself along.  He was never interested in any toys, he didn't move his head when there were loud noises and he never cried.  We started him on solids at 6 months on the advice of the pediatrician as he seemed to be leaning towards the anemic side...so we boosted his intake with iron fortified rice cereal and extra vitamens in his bottle to keep him going.  He started to sleep less and less...we would drive around the block for awhile, we put him in his stroller and walked around the block for awhile...when he finally fell asleep we would put him to bed and fall to our bed exhausted - only to be woken up two or three short hours later by a little boy who was seemingly hungry, or uncomfortable in some way...we tried everything to get him to sleep more - on any given day it was still six hours total...we were running on fumes by this point but we kept on in hopes that things would change.  When Mason was about eight months old...there was some construction going on in the back alley and the force of the machinery knocked a picture off of our wall - right next to Masons head (he was lying on the floor driving a car back and forth) and he didn't even flinch.  We thought he was deaf...we went to the dr immediately in hopes that maybe this was the answer to all of the things that we were trying to figure out in his short little life.  He was sent for a hearing test and it came back that his hearing was perfect and he scored higher than a normal child with regards to the measurements that showed of how his brain was reacting to the sound.  Back to square one...by this time Mason was cruising around furniture - he would fall and bump his head or his shin and get right back up again without making a sound.  I should probably mention in all of this that he was vaccinated about a month later than recommended each time with no reaction to the shots.  Mason continued on happily playing with cars and driving them back and forth on the floor - it was the only thing that he would play with - he would lie on his back and spin the wheels constantly - never making a sound and never responding to anyone calling his name.  By this time we knew that maybe something is up but when we spoke to the dr at his one year check up they told us to wait.  We said ... ok...and plugged along - sleep deprived and frusterated that we weren't getting anywhere... Mason was 15 months old when we had had enough - from the time of his first birthday to the 15 month mark - he had developed a wicked "temper" - he started banging his head on the walls - wherever and whenever he could, we did everything we could think of to teach him how to "ask" for stuff and we made some headway with basic signing.  It became apparent that there were very few places that we could take him that would not trigger an all out meltdown (as we now call them).  This carried on - we managed to get a referral to a pediatrician at a children's hospital but we were looking at a wait of about three months (at that time it seemed like an eternity).  In the meantime the home visits started and we managed to get someone to listen to us and what our concerns were and then things were kicked into high gear - I am not going to go over the details of what followed with the assessments and diagnosis...my point to sharing up to this point is that maybe there is genetic autism that a child is born with - wired differently from day one and then there is the kind that makes a kid change seemingly overnight and with therapies and dietary changes we encounter a "cure".  What I do know to be the same is that early intervention works really well...I have four children - all of them vaccinated and only one with autism...Mason is my third child - he didn't reach certain milestones, he didn't cry, he didn't sleep and he didn't eat (much).  He has autism - he is 6 years old - he has been in school since he was 33 months, he still doesn't eat and sleep is optional except when it is the full moon - and then if we were students in college pulling the perpetual allnighter then we would have company.  We are used to it now...our lives are completely blessed.  This is the kind of autism that gets minimal attention and not that I want it to be splashed across the front page news...I wonder how many more people out there have heard this varying version of events.  Mason didn't wake up one day and stop - he gets up everyday and starts something new...just trying to make sense of the world he was born into and doing his very best to "fit in".  Cheers all... ---------------------------------- How many Children, do you think, have Autism on this end of the spectrum?