Hi there, I was diagnosed in my mid 40s following my son's diagnosis age 3.
I began to suspect I was autistic a few years before becoming a mum, at a period that now I can identify with burnout. So by the time my son was diagnosed I was already pretty aware of the spectrum, and his diagnosis in a way confirmed my own suspicions about myself being autistic.
My pregnancy was a time I really would not wish to revisit. My sensory sensitivities heightened, and I was finding it difficult to deal with my body changes. I was permanently sickened by smells, above and beyond what's considered "normal" in pregnancy. I struggled with my proprioception and had lots of digestive problems which didn't resolve until my son was a few months old actually. I come from a Latin American culture, where the mother is both revered and blamed for everything that goes "wrong" with the child, and I don't think my family and friends appreciated what I was going through. I had no close friends in Scotland who I could connect with either, as most people I knew didn't have children. So I felt really lonely, tired, and unsupported, and I didn't really look forward to becoming a parent.
On top of that, I initially had come across a lot of information about parents being judged bad parents simply for being on the spectrum.
Paradoxically, while not feeling prepared to be a parent, at the same time was terrified of the social services. I had read terrible things and was really worried that if I told anyone what I suspected, I'd be kept under close watch in case I proved to be unfit to parent. For a few years I kept my suspicions of being autistic quiet, until the day my boy was diagnosed. When I realised I had been right with my observations, I felt confident to open up to his diagnostician, and she encouraged me to get a diagnosis myself.
So those first few years were particularly difficult.
My son didn't develop like the books I read and the parenting websites I consulted, and that caused me a great deal of stress. In hindsight, this was simply because the literature on child development is written for and by NTs. Whenever I tried to speak to a professional about my concerns I was usually dismissed. My own suspicions of my son being autistic weren't taken seriously, until he started nursery and his teacher called us to tell us she suspected he was autistic (!)
So in a nutshell, I think that the difficulties of being a parent, for me, come with social interaction and trying to manage my own energy in the face of the expectations that society has of me as a parent. My boy has challenges, but again, I think these challenges are so in the context of society. To make a silly hypothesis, my boy and I on an uninhabited island would probably fare just fine. It's the introduction of societal expectations what creates the challenge.
I think being a mum has improved me in many ways, i.e. my tolerance my self-knowledge and my knowledge of humanity itself have grown exponentially. However, I know all this has come at a high personal cost. Had it not been for my ex wanting children I'd probably would have not had my son. But in hindsight, I would have miss out on a source of joy and inspiration and an enormous amount of love given and received. As for my son I don't want to get soppy and start going on about how awesome he is, but really he is an amazing kid, and now I can't imagine life without him.
