How It All Started...

Our little guy was born early, but not early enough that he needed any form of intervention. He had an APGAR score of 9. He was (and of course, still is) beautiful.
He developed well, although suffered from reflux. Horrible reflux that I mentioned to his pediatrician on more than one occasion. Horrible reflux that his pediatrician assured us wasn't a problem.
He was slow to start finger foods. He would gain sounds (mama, dada) then lose them for a few months, then gain them back, then lose them. This is regression.
He pointed with his hand, not with an index finger. He didn't clap. As a non-native, I didn't know this is what they were talking about when asking if he 'played pattycake'. Why they couldn't call it clapping, I have no idea. So, we had some fine motor delays and some speech development regression. The reflux continued until he was one. It was also accompanied by progressively worsening bowel issues. He developed strabismus (wonky eyes) at the age of 6 months and we corrected with surgery at the age of 1.
At the age of one he started walking - right on time. A week later he progressed to running.
Then he became fascinated with doors - opening and closing them. He didn't care whether they were regular doors, automatic doors, large or small. He loved them all.
The bowel issues continued to get worse, he developed dark circles under his eyes, he started getting ear infections and croup regularly.
It seemed like we were at our pediatrician's office every other week.
By the age of 2 we'd seen enough, we were desperately worried. He had less than 5 words and those words were odd ones, like "twenty", "stethoscope" and "square". He also seemed to be exceptional at jigsaws, he could put together a 24 piece puzzle at 2 and instead of being able to label a few things by name (by pointing at them), he could name 100.
The developmental pediatrician we saw had no reservations in diagnosing him with classic autism at a moderate to severe level. We were devastated. We were also a little in denial as to the severity of our son's problem, but, either way, we figured we would take the diagnosis and the help that came with it. We also knew that, for our son, there had been developmental regression during his first 2 years of life. We knew he had medical issues and we were determined to treat everything we could in our aim to help him reach the potential we knew he had. And so began our journey.