Crying in the Dark - Chapter Two - He's Okay

            Thinking back to when Christian was a baby, there were signs.  When a mother talks about the signs that her child is exhibiting, friends and family members do their best to console her.  She begins to hear ‘Children hardly ever reach milestones at the same time that others do’, ‘He doesn’t like certain things, that doesn’t make him any different’ or my favorite: ‘He’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with how he’s growing’. 
            I remember being in the waiting room at the Pediatricians office and hearing all of the babies with their cute baby talk, babies being fussy, or the sounds of the mothers calming a crying baby.  I look at my son, sitting in his carrier – he looks up at me and smiles, I smile back.  I love you.  Mothers would always come up to me and tell me that they wished their child was as well behaved as mine or that my son was so quiet and they hoped that theirs would be the same.  I never knew the difference; I just thought that some days, they may have good days like I did.  Christian was always a good baby.
            When Christian was two months old, yes I said two months, he stopped eating puree food.  So then what did he eat?  Well, food that was not ‘slimy’ or having a ‘liquid’ texture.  I have lived with my mother almost the whole time I have had my son and he’s five now.  So I have had some help along the way and she said that we had to do what we had to, to keep him healthy.  He ate and ate a lot.  We would microwave waffles for him and made sure that we would buy the wheat waffles or even the ones with the fruit inside.  We did everything we could, to get him to eat.  When it was bed time, I would make him a bottle and put baby food inside, because if you shook it good enough, it was like a flavoring to the milk.  He loved it and slept almost the whole night.
            As a young mom, I was scared that there was something wrong with my son, because he showed signs of autism.  Although the signs he showed were small, I could see them even if no one else could.  Eventually I let those thoughts seep into the back of my mind to be opened four and a half years later when a stranger came up to me.  Until then, I believed everyone else when they said ‘He’s okay’.