When my son was an infant my husband and I knew something wasn't right. My son had problems sleeping by himself from day one. In order for us to sleep, we let our baby sleep with us. I was very nervous, and cautious.
My husband laid on his side away from our son. I slept in the center, our son on the edge of the bed. We placed a roll of towels on the edge of the bed so he would not roll out. By the time our son was one and a half. I believed he was autistic. I told the doctor, and of course he said my son was not autistic. Our son had good eye to eye contact. So in my doctor's mind, our son was not autistic.

Unfortunately, one year later, our son was finally diagnosed with autism. As parents we were persistent in getting to the root of our son's problem. We didn't really understand autism, and we really did not understand our son's behavior.
My family was telling me to discipline him, and telling my husband and I we had poor parenting skills. I started to feel like a failure. Then one day my husband had enough. We got on the Internet, asked questions. Set appointments with specialist, and we received the truth, the answer we were looking for- Autism.

As health care providers, we need to educate ourselves more on the signs and symptoms of autism and other PDD, then we need to educate parents, daycare providers and teachers, on how to recognize a child with higher forms of autism.
I hate to think of all the children out there being mis-diagnosed, or being those little angels not begin diagnosed with a PPD. As health care providers, we need to do more to start early diagnosis to babies and toddlers.