Hello, my name is Alexis Quinn. I’m going to talk today about pregnancy and childbirth
for autistic parents. Having a family has been such an important part of my life and
for me really leading a fulfilling life. I’ve always wanted a family and set about to
have lots of kids but actually never met Mr Right. Relationships and that sort of connectedness have
been hard for me. But you know thankfully today families come in all different shapes and sizes.
Mine has me as the mum. I’ve got a daughter who is 8 and my son is a year old now. I’m autistic,
so is my daughter and my son, he’s a donor baby, and we’ve had a really happy family life. We’ve
managed to co-exist really successfully, within the neurotypical world but, as an autistic
person it hasn’t always been easy for me. You know, when I birthed my daughter I wasn’t
prepared; certainly I wasn’t prepared. I don’t think any parent is actually,
for the upheaval of a baby but what made it worse is that I wasn’t supported autistically to manage.
You know there is a great shift, isn’t there, in identity for any parent when they have a baby and
adding in to that, the executive functioning problems, managing to do activities of daily
living... I think the disruption as well to your sensory system; obviously babies cry and they have
toys that make noises and things. And everything else really that goes along with parenting.
And people didn’t know how to support me. I don’t think that will come as a surprise to the autistic
community. And you know, my descent into the mental health world is well documented. But I knew
I wanted more children after I had my daughter and when I felt ready I knew what I needed to do.
And I just want to share with you today some easy steps to autistic parenting success
and here’s a few things that really helped me. First of all I would just say “Know who you are;
be proud of yourself” because when you’re proud you can advocate for yourself, can’t you? You
can say what you want. You can tell people what helps. You can tell people what doesn’t help.
When I had my first daughter I wasn’t confident to do that, but having done that now it meant
that I have got the support that I needed. I told people you know, I said to them “look,
I know myself best” and when I met professionals and they weren’t quite getting it I said “look,
I know you’ve met me for 10 minutes and I know you’ve got an awful lot of knowledge and you
are coming to this with a lot of experience but I have got autistic experience. Please tell me
the evidence base for what you are suggesting and let’s work something out together”.
So I think don’t be afraid to tell people what you need and spend some time thinking about
reasonable adjustments, talk to professionals. They know medicine as I say, but they don’t
know what’s best for you, so what I guess what I’m trying to get at is, relationships are key
to all of this, and don’t accept deficit based language. You are not a disorder,
you are not faulty, you don’t need fixing. What you do need
is to feel accepted, isn’t it? To be listened to and communicated with autistically. We know from
non-autistics that when they are not listened to, that’s one of the leading causes of birth trauma,
but I think even more so for us because we communicate differently, don’t we?
So we need to be communicated with autistically as well and we do need support. Just like any other
birthing parent we need support, so don’t feel bad about, insisting on that because non-autistics do.
So these are the things I guess, that I had the second time around.
I had the most magnificent birth you know. It was completely autism friendly and because of that,
entirely uneventful which is what you want really, isn’t it for a birth? It was joyous
and I had great after care too because I sort of made sure I had that that kind of continuing care
after the birth. I had the same midwife, the same health visitor that I’d met before. So,
it’s World Autism Awareness Week and I just wanted to say that autistic people can have
positive birthing experiences. We can make great parents and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.