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 *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html