"There is no such thing as reproduction"

(At least, that's what I'm told this book says). And it's true.

At least once a day, I have the discussion with a pregnant patient about the limitations of prenatal testing and ultrasound. "Let me share with you," I'll say. "I realized, about halfway through my counselling session with the geneticist during my second pregnancy, that what I was really worried about? Was autism."

[Break to explain, especially for readers with an autism-spectrum disorder, or who are raising kids with one: I was worried about autism not because of the diagnosis itself, but because I thought I would be really terrible at parenting an autistic child. This assessment was made with woefully limited information at the time, but regardless I had this whole fear about how it would combine with my native social anxiety and my general impatience in a bad way, and that this kid - my kid - would suffer more because of my particular inadequacies.]

Read more »