Way back in season 1 of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, Jacqueline Laurita shared her struggle to get pregnant, even confessing to suffering a miscarriage. But it all had a happy ending when Jacqueline showed up to the season 1 reunion very pregnant, and had her son Nicholas just before the start of season 2.
Jacqueline pregnant at the season 1 reunion in 2009.
Now Jacqueline is telling People that her family is facing some new challenges with Nicholas being diagnosed as autistic at age 3.
Jacqueline says that she started noticing changes in her son at about 18 months old when he begin regressing with his speech and motor skills. She also said he failed to recognize his own name or notice people when they would enter a room.
“We had no idea what was going on,” Jacqueline said.
An person with autism may have trouble communicating and interacting with others and children are often diagnosed before the age 3. Jacqueline and her husband Chris Laurita made the decision not to bring up the subject while filming the current season of the reality show. The family went through a lot of trials trying to figure out what was going on with Nicholas until he was finally diagnosed from multiple doctors.
“I worry about him being independent when he’s older,” Jacqueline, who also has two other kids, Ashlee, 21 and C.J.,10. “I spend all my time researching what we can do for him.”
Jacqueline’s husband Chris, who is also co-star Caroline Manzo’s brother, also told People how they were handling with little Nicholas’s diagnosis.
“You never want to think that your child isn’t perfectly healthy,” Chris said. “We didn’t want to believe it was true.
Gina Pusateri
Contributing Writer
(Images courtesy of People and Bravo)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
