Worrying About Autism More Than Anything Else
December 29, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Baby, Health, Vaccines
An expecting mother wrote this yesterday on BabyCenter:
…..more than anything else that could go wrong with this pregnancy, I am more worried about my child having autism than anything else in the world.
These causes, many reported by the popular media, and without valid evidence to back them up, are listed:
- Vaccines, especially with thermisol, the kid getting them all at once (flu shot, MMR)
- Smelling cleaning products while pregnant (Lysol, etc.)
- Advanced maternal age
- Having autism in your family
- Heat, hot baths, hot showers
- Worrying and stressing
- Rainy climates
The UC M.I.N.D. Institute’s MARBLES (rs of Autism Risk in Babies—Learning Early Signs) seems to be referred to, though I don’t think the “smelling” of cleaning products during pregnancy is specifically mentioned. The study linking rainy climates to autism rates is noted—a study about which there’s doubt as to “whether the paper deserved to be published and reported,” as stated in the Times Online. Older parents, fathers as well as mothers, have been linked to autism, and there’s a number of studies for genetics, for autism being “in the family.”
But “worrying” and “stressing” and hot showers and baths?
Will we next be hearing about whether worrying about autism be linked to causing autism?
Yes, the numerous claims that vaccines can be linked to autism have been gnawing away at the fears of parents-to-be even though vaccinations do not cause autism.
Hope that the expecting mother on BabyCenter might, instead of fearing autism, learn about it, learn that there’s a lot that you can do to help a child, and know that life raising an autistic child—-life raising a child—-isn’t what the popular media makes it out to be. It may be a different parenting adventure than one might think—for us, for sure, it’s been full of much that’s unexpected, and more goodness and love than I could ever have bargained for.
Jeff Stimpson
Jill Cornfield
If that woman thinks the worst possible thing that can happen to the child she is carrying is autism, she is living in some sort of strange delusion. (which is obvious from the list of bizarre things she thinks can cause autism)
First, as you point out, autism is absolutely NOT the horror that people unfamiliar with it seem to think it is. It won’t kill a child. Children with autism are happy, and healthy…just different from their peers.
There is a whole boatload of things that could happen to that child that would be FAR worse than autism. Statistically, they may be far less likely to happen, of course, but they would be far worse.
I know this on a very personal level because before my beautiful autistic 5 year old daughter was born, I had a son - a son who was stillborn at 23 weeks gestation.
I know all too well that compared to the crushing grief of burying a child, having a child with autism is a walk in the park.
Which is something I’ll never get to do with my son.
Aw, don’t judge this woman too harshly. Autism was my own personal boogeyman when I was pregnant the first time, too. Being a labor and delivery nurse, I had a heightened sense of paranoia and fear that came from knowing (and having witnessed) everything that could go wrong. However, it was autism that was the big bad scary thing I feared the most.
God is not without a sense of irony, of course, since my first child is indeed autistic. It was only after having him and meeting other mothers who had gone through the unimaginable pain of burying a child that I realized that autism is, as Nancy said, a walk in the park compared to some other things.
At any rate, I can remember being that scared pregnant woman. When autism isn’t already a part of your life, it does indeed seem terrifying and tragic.
And doctors having very different opinions about the vaccine schedule doesn’t help the parental confusion!
Washington Post today on the vaccine schedule—-it’s Paul Offit on the problems with Dr. Bob’s vaccine schedule and Dr. Bob responding.
There are so many things that can happen to a child -diseases that kill, accidents that maim, and autism itself, is not fatal. Different yes, but fatal it is not and that is a blessing by comparison to the other things that can befall our kids. When my daughter’s second child was born and we learned he too is autistic, so many people offered sympathy to us, to the family -”What a shame” was heard frequently. I don’t happen to share that opinion. Having raised three children of my own and now, being with my two younger grandkids 24-7, the only real differences I see is the methods one has to try to be able to reach, to communicate better or adequately to help the two little ones to learn. The real problem in my opinion is getting others, those NOT affected by autism, who are ignorant that these kids are very much like all other children -needing love, affection, discipline and education and acceptance -just maybe a bit more at times.
ABFH had a good read on this fear and ties it back to some of the “awareness” campaigns by Autism Speaks and others. I think these campaigns have largely been effective at the raising fear, not enlightenment. If you look at the ads from the Ad Council, they are only about the “fear”, the “fear” that you could be the next one with an autistic child. The unintended consequence of these videos is the further segregation and intolerance I see in my local school system. Suddenly, parents of typical kids don’t want one of “those” kids in their mainstream classes, thus further limiting children like mine to further and further marginalization. But here is the rub, the people that produce those commercials don’t have to fear marginilization as much as my son and other’s like him because the people that create and pay for those ads, like the Wrights, have very large trusts set up for their children. It will be children like mine, Charlie, ASDMomNC’s child and nearly everyone that will read this post. Our children pay the price for the hubris of the Wrights and others. There are lots of ways to raise funds. The Wrights don’t even raise the majority of their funds through these ads. They raise them with walks and celebrity events. You could take the ads and erase them tomorrow and they won’t effect the operating budget of AS. The ads serve no purpose and are harmful. I wish Katie Wright could see that, but she is too fixated on causation and blame. We are all paying the price for the Wright Family’s internal grief process.
Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick on Spiked today about how the “charlatanic ‘war on autism’” has made raising an autistic child harder:
And this about acceptance from Dr. Fitzpatrick:
I think the broader picture is that these days it seems like parents to be are expecting the “perfect” child and anything less than that is unacceptable. It’s the fear of the unknown that disability brings.
Bravo, Dr. Fitzpatrick. You hit the nail on the head.
Hopefully, this expecting mom won’t have to find out that there are many worse situations than having a child on the spectrum. Ironically, it was never a concern of mine while pregnant with any of my three children. Back then, I was just trying to get my pregnancies to go full-term after having had four 1st trimester miscarriages. All three of my children have some sort of ADHD or autism.
Four 1st trimester losses sounds like the same problem that caused the loss of my son…anti-phospholipid antibody syndrome, causing placental blood clots. It usually results in multiple 1st trimester losses. I was diagnosed after my son managed to somehow hang on till 23 weeks. Then I had to have blood thinner shots daily through my entire pregnancy with my daughter (starting at 5 weeks pregnant, as soon as she had a visible hearbeat on ultrasound) and hold my breath for 9 months.
The thing with the Autism Speaks campaign and raising money for autism is that the way to raise money for a cause is to show it doing absolutely horrible things to kids. Want to feed the starving African continent? Show emaciated kids.
The Wrights are using their Hollywood marketing savvy to try to raise money by making autism out to be a horrible horrible thing that of course people will donate to, and won’t mind their government spending money on, etc. From a fundraising standpoint, it’s the smart thing. “We must help those poor pathetic children! This is terrible!”
Unfortunately, from an awareness and acceptance standpoint, it backfires, because it makes our children look so much less than they are.
Ecki, I think you have it right about expecting perfection, about thinking the world should be a perfect place. It’s actually a common thread that runs through much of what has been discussed here…parents who don’t vaccinate because they think the world is safe now from those diseases, and I’m sure the poster who is an L&D nurse sees it all the time in her patients who are blissfully unaware that anything could go wrong in childbirth because modern childbirth is “perfectly safe”, and who fight medical intervention that is necessary for the safety of them and their baby. I’m walking proof that they are wrong. I almost died of HELLP syndrome (a severe form of pre-eclampsia) giving birth to my stillborn son, and have brain damage as a result.
“Natural” childbirth. “Natural” immunity acquired by having a disease. Some people seem to have forgotten that a lot of people died back when we all did it the “old-fashioned” way.
I wish people would worry about things they can actually effect in their child’s lives. Like whooping cough. Or the flu. Or car seat safety. I would *love* for parents to start worrying about car seat safety with as many children I see unrestrained or improperly restrained in cars.
Autism isn’t the end of the world, although I can somewhat understand that with all the talk about how people with Autism are “locked in their own world”. Neither is having a child who has another developmental disability. Do people realize that 1 in 150 is really icky odds anyway? The rate of childhood epilepsy is about the same- I don’t see parents fretting about that. Odds are higher that your child will develop schizophrenia at some time in their life (1 in 90). Schizophrenia can be downright devastating- although it certainly is not the end of the world either. Peanut allergy is 1 out of 75. Asthma is about 1 out of 10.
It’s good to see the AAP taking a more active and involved approach to all of the scaremongering that has gone on.
One can only hope that parents pay attention. If I was a pediatrician, I’d photocopy that article and frame it for the waiting room.
Joe
It depends on if the worry is about the future life of the expectant mother or about the child.
Is the person worried about the the impact on her life, or the possible inability of the child to fully take part in society.
Thank you for this article! I had the autism/vaccine conversation with my doctor today and he actually gave me some good reading to do. My son is one…
@Mayfly
“It depends on if the worry is about the future life of the expectant mother or about the child.
Is the person worried about the the impact on her life, or the possible inability of the child to fully take part in society.”
As a person with an ASD, comments like the one above send chills through me for their heartlessness and disregard for my humanity.
What heartless disregard for your humanity? Has it become inhumane to care about the plight of a child?
I worry about by daughter’s future, no not every minute of the day, we are too busy enjoying life for that. But I do care about where she’ll live, if she’ll ever have friends, who her caretakers will be.
I make no apologies for my concerns.
““Natural” childbirth. “Natural” immunity acquired by having a disease. Some people seem to have forgotten that a lot of people died back when we all did it the “old-fashioned” way.”
—–
I say the exact same thing all the time. Natural remedies and methods have their place, but by God, I am VERY thankful for modern Western medicine.
People wax poetic about the “good old days” when everything was “natural,” but seem to conveniently overlook nasty little facts like the horrifyingly high infant and maternal mortality rates from things like death in childbirth and death from childhood ailments like whooping cough. Those were also “natural” realities of the “good old days.”
/soapbox
Nancy and Tanya, I’m very sorry for your losses.
Hello friends -
The irony is that we have accumulating evidence that a stressful pregnancy is more likely to lead to a child that has autism or other developmental disorders. She may, indeed, be able to worry herself into the situation she so dreads.
- pD
ASDmomNC, I’m a genealogist (actually write for some genealogy magazines & used to research professionally for others). I have literally stacks of tombstone records and photos that document what it used to be like…all the lost children, the women routinely dying in childbirth.
I have great respect for the women in my family who lived a century or more ago. I don’t think a single one of them buried less than one small child. Many of them didn’t survive childbirth themselves.
A walk through a cemetery that is about 100-125 years old, filled with the graves of small children who died of childhood illnesses, might cure some of these anti-vaxxers of their religious fervor on the topic. Yeah, I know we can treat those illnesses better today than we could then, but it still gives you pause…
@Nancy Nally,
that definitely sets things in a different perspective—-
It doesn’t mean much, but I was happy while expecting Charlie—-being pregnant was, indeed, a wonderful experience.
I do not like seeing autism treated in the same light as psychiatric illnesses. It leaves our children in the twilight of being medically treated with the psychiatric drugs. These drugs have such wonderful side effects that there are patients who prefer to go back down the psychoses well rather than continue to deal with how these drugs make them feel. They are management drugs that assuage the symptoms, with the right dosage which is different from one person to the next, and don’t cure anything.