2 months before I became pregnant with my son Z I had a miscarriage. At the time I didn’t understand why this had happened to me until later on. When I gave birth to Z this delivery felt different than his siblings' deliveries, of course, it was painful but something inside my soul felt different. I brought him home and of course I fell in love.

Everything was great with him! He was hitting every milestone and was even signing by age one. When he was two years old his behavior began to change. If we were at a store and if it was crowded or someone came up to him to say hey, he would scream, try to scratch and even throw his shoes at them. I thought how can someone so young have anger issues already. I remember going to a meeting for my daughter at her school. When it was time for the meeting to start everyone started to sit down. I notice the closer people were getting to him the more uncomfortable he was becoming. Then he started screaming, well honestly it was more of a screeching noise like he was in pain. That moment I knew something was wrong.

At two and a half he started to regress. He was no longer eating his five groups of foods, he went down to eating only two groups of foods. He became obsessed with crayons! He had to have them at all times and they had to be lined up. If his routine wasn’t the same he would have a meltdown. And he was still not speaking and would only sign a couple of words now. I knew it was time to see his doctor.

After I explained to the doctor everything that was going on, she referred Z to an occupational and speech therapist. The occupational therapist suggested that Z should go get evaluated for Autism. When we received the results back from the evaluation in February 2015, Z was diagnosed with Autism and Developmental Delay. I cried and cried not asking God why but asking Him to give me the knowledge to be able to help Z with this Autism journey.