I'm posting this with hopes that the Wise Ones on Lactnet may be able to
help. I have permission from Sharone and the mother. You can contact her at:
[log in to unmask]

Please respond to Sharone as well as the list if applicable. Thank you for
any ideas and/or help.

Pauli Fyffe, LLLL
Arvada, CO

-------------------------

I work as a parent educator in a provider support organization for families
coping with Autism. I am working with a mom of one of our homeschool
consulting students. Mom gave birth to a second child (now 5.75 months old)
whose sensorimotor, social and precommunication development seems different
with delayed milestones as well. The developmental aspects of the situation I
have training and resources to deal with as we screen and provide
intervention for children. So the babies development is not my concern here.
We have also helped with family support and parent education this last
year.

But mom has just informed me that she has barely slept a few nights since
the birth--virtually total insomnia. There is a question of both post partum
as well as prexisting mania, depression and/or anxiety disorders. Mom is a
"high needs/high maintenance" kind of person as a client who does not respond
well to brief visits with authoritarian treatment recommendations. All her
care providers, from an array of fields, have not communicated well around
her own special needs or with each other in designing interventions.

All her care providers have now "backed off" from meeting with her at all
beyond providing phone-in prescriptions. So she now has lost trust but is
left with a huge collection of allopathic, hormal, naturopathic, and
nurtritional treatment substances and she is contemplating combining them for
self-medicating and to continuing nursing.

The last issue of special needs is that the baby is rigid in his nursing
routine. He panics and screams 24/7 at any strategies that might allow mom to
nurse and medicate. Many infants with autism present with this history
extreme inflexible nursing behaviors even at later ages of 2-5 yo. They often
refuse water, solids and any feedling substitutes. It would be nice to get
mom sleeping and rested before she had to take on any weaning challeges.But I
fear for the child, the baby and mom home alone under these circumstances. I
wish we lived in Britian were post partum care practice is
better researched and more well established.

I have advised them to to hold off experimenting with drugs and herbs without
a fully informed treatment provider and/or weaning. Moreover, I have
recommended they seek comprehesive care that better meets their physical and
pyschological needs. But they have brought me into the loop at the eleventh
hour when mom was is literally feeling at her wits' end. She wants a pill
quick fix NOW. I can not help in that regard.

So this is a situation with a number of medical and mental health aspects
around diversity and the family is not finding the comprehensive approach
they need around the biological and psychological features of this particular
post partum situation. Any thoughts, personal experience or professional
resources out there. We are in Salem, Oregon USA.

Sharone

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