Oh [laughs]. That’s quite a question. Definitely biomedical things. There are definite links there to the sensory things, to allergies. Again these couple of mums that I am particularly friendly with, we have brainstormed and discussed, we would like to do a wee survey locally amongst mums to see what we can find out. There is definitely genetics and it is definite because you can look back to other members of the family and see traits. And people who maybe 30, 40 years ago should have got a diagnosis, now they would. So there is that line definitely, biomedical. Andrews has never had any jabs but that is because my sister and had horrific allergic reactions to jabs when we were younger, particularly the rubella jab we were very ill after that.

 

So I made a decision and the doctors backed me up and now that they are back in the town, this is where my sister and I grew up anyway, the doctors are absolutely okay with that because they saw the reaction that we had but one of my friends is absolutely convinced that her wee boy was okay till he had it. And whether it has then triggered all the biomedical things, but Andrew definitely had the biomedical things from birth. He definitely had a digestive problems, sleep problems, although at one point looking back on old video tapes at one point he did have a few words. About a year he did have a few words, but by the time he was two and he was diagnosed he had none. So I can see why people say there is regression.

 

And as a baby the reason they didn’t… they weren’t terribly concerned - the health visitor and the GP - when he was a baby was, he was advanced. He walked quicker, he sat up quicker, he moved quicker, he could do things, he could do jigsaws, he could do shape sorters, like in two seconds, so he appeared advanced. So I can see where the regression thing comes in. Why people definitely feel that because their child seemed clever, bright, alert, advanced and then whoosh, come eighteen months two everything goes backwards and I think with some children it is, the jabs are just thing that just trips them over the edge.

Whether it sets up an allergy thing. I used to be a member of Allergy Induced Autism. They now don’t exist any more but there is definitely an allergy link and there is a big family history on my side of side of the family of allergies, asthma, migraines, skin allergies, reactions to foods. So that is definitely, definitely part of it. It is almost as if with Andrew all these things sort of fit and then sometimes I wonder why was it him and not the girls? And somebody said maybe it is something going back to his birth and who knows. Who knows because he was blue when he was born and he had to get oxygen straight away and the girls didn’t. Was it stress related? There was a lot of family stress at the time and I was on crutches with Andrew as well, but then I was on crutches with Hannah and she is okay. It is really very hard to pinpoint what is the exact but I can see why some of the charities have a jigsaw as logo because it is almost like all these pieces. I don’t think there is any one thing.

 

We did some hair tests with Andrew three years ago now and where some children with autism it is high levels of mercury or aluminium, he had high levels of tin, which that took a bit of working out but when Andrew was born we were in brand new house and the copper pipes had tin solder and a lot of it. The plumbing work wasn’t terribly well done, that is how we can remember because we remember my Dad inspecting the work and thinking they have made a right mess of this. And they had used a lot of tin solder on the copper pipes. So maybe because then as a baby he was exposed to that. Rachel was already old enough and then we moved from that house before Hannah was born. Maybe that had something as well that tipped it. But we were very surprised and the place that did the hair test result were very, very surprised as well, as he had high levels of tin when they assessed him. That was a very unusual, very unusual result.

 

So definitely sensory things in our family, you know going back to balance things, although he has got super balance, sensory things with noise, when I was small I didn’t like noise. I didn’t like some textures. There are things you can look back on and trace to Granny or whoever, that is almost as if it is all going to come together. Andrew has inherited it all from everybody [laughs]. And then some of his behaviours. It is difficult pinpointing what behaviours are autism, and what behaviours are personality. Like some of it, obviously the routine thing and routines being changed and not liking, us saying no you have to do such and such. Some of that is the autism and some of that is possibly that he is stubborn, because the girls are stubborn and strong minded. It is very hard to say.