AS and Caesarean Birth

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All my kids were normal births....I was normal, actually my mom nearly didnt get to the hospital with me. My 7 year old came out sunny side up and with his hand on his forehead. He was my fourth and the only one I had any pain meds for....I had a epidural and Im glad I did, didnt feel a darn thing. I had my two older girls at home with a midwife, very normal. My older son was born in a hospital and I was induced but it was a normal birth other than my nurse was a B***h. My youngest was born two weeks early (still not considered pre mature at that age of gestation) and she couldnt wait to come out. My crazy doctor thought I wasnt progressing fast enough (guess he wanted to go home) so he broke my water....not a good idea for a fifth baby. I went from a 3 to a 9 in 15 minutes and the poor nurse nearly had to deliver her.
I do notice that my kids with Autism and Asperger's have big heads....I do too! My 20 year old NT has a perfect little head....she can wear hats and everything !

Most of the AS people I've seen have big heads... but that's just two out of three.

And what happens if the baby isn't delivered and just stays in there?

Both the mother and the child die.

Whaaaat? Nu uh.

I was a natural birth but premature (1 lb 12 oz) and I don't know what I have (AS is a possiblity I think) my mom and I are working on getting me diagnosed (and for AS specifically but just looked at in general).


I don't see how a baby could stay inside as the mother (even without a doctor) would push the baby out (I assume I don't know all the details of childbirth). If the baby was able to stay in I'd think that they would die however whether the mother would as well depends on her health and why the baby stayed in. I'm not a doctor this is just my opinion.

I was born the natural way, but forceps were used since the labor was too long for the doctor who became impatient.

Yep. The baby would die most certainly, because it needs to make the transition to breathing air and if the baby didn't come out pretty soon, the mother would get very sick and ultimately die. They'd take the baby out though. I know of someone whose baby died while in her belly at about 6 months pregnancy. She was able to take a few days before she went in, but she had to go to have the baby taken out as it didn't go out on its own. It was very sad.

That would be a very rare situation and would involve a very severe hormonal disorder or some kind of radical malpositioning. Babies can come out upside down and backwards, but they can not come out if they are side to side without surgery. Babies do move around and can move, but if there were some kind severe physical deformity or entanglement that got the baby truly stuck mom and baby would die.

Babies don't all take exactly the same amount of time to hatch, and there are signs that a pregnacy is going "too long" beyond the length of time. Technically a baby is not "overdue" until after 44 weeks. 40 weeks is an average. Babies are generally ready between 38 and 42 weeks, and that is considered "term." Two weeks either way on top of that can sometimes be completely normal. More than that either way and the baby is technically early or late. Some folks consider themselves "late" a day after 38 weeks and this kind of thinking can be detrimental. Of course there is almost always some wiggle room to when conception took place as the actual time involved from procreation to implantation can vary, so this means there is reasonable caution around the extreme ends of those dates.

My third child was born at approximately two days short of 44 weeks. He was quite active and there was no sign of any kind of trouble or overly long pregnancy. At birth he was covered in a thick layer of vernix, which is something associated with earlier births. Due to fertility issues conception had been monitored so the dates are quite accurate, give or take about 48 hours.


Ferdinand,

As a baby is born there are all sorts of amniotic fluids comeing out with the baby. It is continually produced and refreshed. It's the same stuff the baby has been marinating in for 9 mos. If you swallowed anything it would have been the same stuff you'd been swallowing all along.

I didn't answer about my own birth yet. I'm not in the spectrum as far as I know, but I do have ADHD and some spectrumy qualities.

I was born at 32 weeks coincidentally at the hospital that had the first NICU in the world. There was a massive rupture of membranes, possibly due to strep B which can weaken them. Labor didn't begin overnight so I was induced with pitocin, but it went quite quickly and easily. I was in an incubator for some months with tubes and stuff and that is associated with some kinds of neuro and developmental stuff, and could explain some of my sensory stuff etc.

My first three years were apparently quite traumatic as I had severe respiratory infections and then I needed some bits and pieces sorted out orthopedicly so I could walk. After that I was a very healthy kid. I also had unusually severe reflux which led to some nasty nutrition issues, that exacerbated whatever else was going on. I just remember the unlimited access to popsicles I had as a toddler as a positive thing to my little kid mind. Apparently I could keep them down, the cold helped my throat, and any calories were better than nothing.

I think my ADHD is just something that runs in the family. I'm sure my mom and grandmom had it, and I believe my bio-dad has diagnosed himself or been diagnosed with it (he's a doctor). I wonder if some of my AS like qualities come from some of that early childhood stuff, especially the touch thing. I can get to the point where I can't stand to be touched and the only thing that helps is getting into warm water with no noise. It only happens to me under extreme stress, and doesn't happen often.

I have a gigantic head. I couldn't wear kids hats when I was younger, and I can't wear women's hats now. I have to wear men's hats that are extended some in order for me to even wear one.

As for the original question, I was born in an emergency C-Section a little after midnight because I was choking on my own poo. I can't remember the exact medical term but I came out in a hurry the color of Shrek.

It's called meconium and this rarely happens outside of an induction or another unusual situation such as a labor stalled by mom's inactivity (strapped to a bed and unable to work with her labor) or severe malpositioning of the baby (often as the result of mom being unable to move freely). Some moms will try to take herbal remedies or castor oil to try to "speed things up" and that can be enough to cause the trouble. Usually the babies bowels are stimulated by the passage through the birth canal and meconium is passed shortly after birth and it's a healthy thing.

Glasson EJ, Bower C, Petterson B, de Klerk N, Chaney G, Hallmayer JF. Perinatal factors and the development of autism: a population study. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2004 Jun;61(6):618-27.

BACKGROUND: Autism is considered to have a genetic basis, although exposure to certain stimuli in the prenatal period has been implicated to be causal in some cases. Some investigations have shown an association with obstetric complications but findings have been inconsistent owing to differences in sampling and methods. OBJECTIVE: To examine the association of obstetric factors with autism spectrum disorders for a cohort of children, using obstetric data contained in a statutory database collected at the time of birth. DESIGN: Subjects born in Western Australia between 1980 and 1995 and diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder by 1999 were included as cases (n = 465). Siblings of the cases (n = 481) and a random population-based control group (n = 1313) were compared with the cases on obstetric information contained in the Maternal and Child Health Research Database of Western Australia. RESULTS: Compared with control subjects, cases had significantly older parents and were more likely to be firstborn. Case mothers had greater frequencies of threatened abortion, epidural caudal anesthesia use, labor induction, and a labor duration of less than 1 hour. Cases were more likely to have experienced fetal distress, been delivered by an elective or emergency cesarean section, and had an Apgar score of less than 6 at 1 minute. Cases with a diagnosis of autism had more complications than those with pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified or Asperger syndrome. Nonaffected siblings of cases were more similar to cases than control subjects in their profile of complications. CONCLUSIONS: Autism is unlikely to be caused by a single obstetric factor. The increased prevalence of obstetric complications among autism cases is most likely due to the underlying genetic factors or an interaction of these factors with the environment.

Stuart,

That sounds reasonable. It'll take many more large studies to get a picture that is likely to be accurate, but that conclusion is supported by that data. There may be other disorders that have similar presentation to AS/ASDs that are more connected to birth circumstances, but it'll be ages before enough data is collected to really be confident. It might be that a case like mine where there is some early stress and trauma leading some similar symptoms but they really are different things.

as far as I know, natural.

Natural. But the tale is that my mother was asleep during my birth and that I was also asleep.

I would not normally post "latest research", but this new study is large - 400,000 Scottish school children - and supports the idea that the likelihood of Special Educational Needs (including autism / AS) increases with prematurity and caesareans, as well as after week 41. There were 18,000 children (4.9%) with SEN, 10% of which were atributable to preterm or late birth, but there is no breakdown of SEN within the paper.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/10274047.stm


http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/inf ... rticles%29