This week...4 years ago...and the difficult pregnancy to follow (Warning: It's a long one)

It's hard to believe that 4 years ago this week, we found out we were pregnant with Brycen! I remember that night so clearly. I had been showing some signs over the week and I asked a co-worker about them, and she literally laughed at me and said "you're pregnant." I stopped at the store on the way home from work that Friday to get a couple pregnancy tests after telling Mike about what she said. Mike's brother happened to be at our house that evening, but there was no way I was going to wait until he left because I was so excited...and a little nervous that it wasn't true. I made Mike look at it first and then he told me to look (not so sure he knew what he was looking for) and there it was...no doubt at all that I was pregnant!
Then within the week, the nausea and morning sickness set in. Only it definitely lasted all day long...when I first woke up, after I got out of shower, on way to work, in afternoon, on way home from work and sometimes before I went to bed. It was a rough couple months for Mike too! He had to actually grocery shop because I would get so nauseous just walking into a grocery store with all the smells and sights of different food. This was before he worked at Fareway, so grocery stores were still pretty foreign for him. I remember the multiple calls each time he had to go to the store, wanting to make sure he got the exact things on the list!
My pregnancy was not an easy one. When I was about 5 months along, a glass broke in the dishwater while I was washing dishes and sliced open my finger pretty bad. The question at Urgent care was how long it had been since my last tetanus shot...and then the other question was if it was safe for me to get one while pregnant. During my follow up with my physician a couple days later, he did some research and we decided together that I would get the tetanus shot as there was no known effects on a pregnancy.
Then in May when I was about 7 months along, my doctor determined my blood pressure was slowly creeping up. I began seeing an OB specialist for the rest of my pregnancy. At 38 weeks, she decided to induce so as not to take the chances of it creeping up any further and putting myself at risk of a seizure and the baby at risk of loss of oxygen. The induction went fabulous! I couldn't have asked for a better labor...I was between 2 and 3cm already so we had many options to start labor, but chose a new procedure using a balloon filled with water to dilate further and then a pitocin drip. Labor lasted less than 8 hours and the worse part was the end. The dr determined Brycen was face up (babies fit better through the canal when they are face down)...and after some time of trying to turn him and making no progress, we all decided on using the vacuum extraction. And there he was in a matter of moments, crying and so big!
Then within a matter of minutes, my BP crashed and I was beginning to pass out, so I was given some medicine to counteract that in my IV.
A couple days later, Brycen began showing extreme signs of jaundice. His levels were just under the point where they hospitalize him and when he is at risk of mental retardation. He received home nursing care with a biliblanket used 24 hours a day for about 5 days. The nurses would come out at least once a day to take his blood, measure and weigh him, and we also had to keep track of every wet and dirty diaper, as well as how much he was eating. He was not latching on very well with breastfeeding, so I would pump what I could and then supplement with formula as we knew the most important thing was helping his body rid of the bilirubin.
I look back at all these things that happened during my pregnancy and labor, and following and wonder if one or more of these things may have caused his autism. For the most part, he developed like a typical child, except he didn't crawl until 12 1/2 months and walk until 17 1/2 months. He also was a very calm baby, easily entertained, didn't experience separation anxiety, but didn't sleep well at all. He constantly needed some kind of stimulation while sleeping whether it was being rocked, sleeping in the vibrating bouncer, or using the vibrator under his mattress. Now that Mike and I look back at the past few years, we see some of the signs of autism creeping in through his development and mannerisms. But as first time parents, we didn't know what to look for.
I'm not sure we will ever know why or what triggered Brycen's autism. Whether it is a mix of our genes, or the fact the pregnancy had a few complications, or the jaundice following the birth...I am not sure if it really matters anymore. It matters for other children in the future of course, but for Brycen's specific situation, our attention needs to be more focused on how we can help him on a daily basis to live the most fulfilling life possible!