Conflicting Diagnosis ASD Related (very long and rambly sorry)

I don't even know where to start.  I am so FRUSTRATED. 

DD was born at 33wks after pPROM. Typical development...hit all her milestones well within her adjusted age. 

 At 15 months I thought her speech/language was delayed, all she said was "What this?" and "What that?"  and would point to the things she was curious about.  She may have had an approximation for 'mama.'  The new pedi said, "No problem, she's fine.  She is pointing and asking questions.  There were no flags when you filled out the Autism sheet.  It will come...she is only 13 months adjusted."  Ok, so another 2 months go by and nothing. Although, we have taught her to sign...more, please, thank you, hurt, and milk which she uses frequently and appropriately.  So, we found a new pedi for her 18 month well visit.  Right away new doc says "Yep, looks like she is speech delayed, I see it in a lot of preemies.  Let's get you set up with EI and speech."  I ask her about ASD.  Pedi says, "Nothing you have told me, or reported on the M-CHAT would give me any indication that you should be worried."  Dr. had spent 30 minutes interacting with DD because we were freaking out!!!!!!!

So, we start EI and speech.  About this time 20-22 months DD started having serious behavioral issues.  Crying hysterically all the time...for hours, 4+ at a time.  We thought maybe it was because I went back to work and now DH was staying home with her.  Then she started hurting herself...head banging against the hardwoods, scratching herself, hitting herself.  It was just awful.  We saw the pedi 2x for this type stuff.  My husband was crying during one visit because we just couldn't handle her.  The pedi was really not very helpful.  She didn't seem to believe the severity and how this was tearing apart our life and our marriage.  She finally consented to sending us to a developmental pedi/child pyschologist at the best children's hospital in our state.  We had by this time switched SLPs and were seeing DRAMATIC results.  DD had gone from 10 words to around 50 in 2 months.  She was still severely delayed receptively and expressively (worse expressively.)  We also started OT ourselves.  She was diagnosed with SPD.  The OT has helped dramatically too. After about a month she stopped the severe tantrums, self-injury.  She is also able to manage crowds now and sit for appropriate amounts of time.  We asked our OT (who spends the most time with DD besides us) if he thought we should keep our appt with MUSC and if he thought she could have/be ASD since obviously she has 2 red flags.  He said to keep the appt since he is not qualified to make that diagnosis and that is worth looking into, but that off the record he felt the SPD and her speech/language delays went hand in hand, but were not co-morbids for ASD. 

 So, we finally got our appt w/ the dev. pedi and the child pysch.  We only saw grad fellows, and met the actual Dr.s once.  They assured us they were watching the evaluation closely.  MMMmmmm 'kay.  So after 6 hrs of testing and countless melt downs.  ASD was ruled out and we had the diagnosis of a conduct disorder!!!!!!!!!  SHE'S 2.5!!!!!!!  I was furious.  No answers.  No explanations.  No nothing.  They called the following Monday as a debriefing, and we told them we couldn't disagree more and were under the impression that a CD shouldn't really be diagnosed until school age.  The fellow said, "Well, we had to put somthing down for insurance purposes.  She did cry an awful lot.  You will receive our full report in mail."  I hung up on her.  This was at MUSC in Charleston...yes I am calling them out!!!!  I have never experienced such negligence.  I am still shocked.  We called our pedi and relayed all of this.  She said well if MUSC says it then I think she must have a CD.  We switched pedis AGAIN. 

So, last month we had another appt with an SLP/child psychologist team at a renowned university in another state. After another 6 hr evaluation they deemed DD to have "atypical/mild" high-functioning Autism.  The Dr. there said that she would have said that DD absolutely did not have ASD after the first 5 hours, because she was so social, made great eye-contact, was so interested in everyone, played intently with the fellow assisting with the eval, wanted the SLP to hug her, didn't have special interests, didn't flap/stim, was very worried when her baby sister cried and always brought me new toys/testing materials to show me that she thought they were exciting or interesting to her. 

Then she says, "I changed my mind in the last hour.  She has very delayed symbolic play skills."  DD was only mildly interested in the toy family brought out during the ADOS (?)  test.  She had the dad doll feed the baby, and then wanted to kick the little soccer ball and play catch with me.  She did kinda look at it like, "huh?"  We don't play with dolls.  She doesn't even have one.  The other example was DD not pretending to brush her teeth with her finger when the Dr. asked to her to "pretend to brush her teeth."  The Dr. went on and on about DD not being able to play and that she would never make any friends esp as a girl since she wasn't creative.  I don't even know what to think about this statement.  DD did play with bubbles, pretending to be in her words, "seal pop with nose."  She did pretend to have a birthday party with a bear and some play-dough. I asked if she was on par for her mental age (28 months)  and was told yes, but the problem was that she wasn't on par with her chron age 36 months.  I asked, "Well if you are telling me that you came up with her mental age of 28 months based on her IQ and speech/language scores then why/how should her play skills be on a 36 month level?"  She said, "That is a very good question."  BUT then she didn't freaking answer me.  She moved on to point TWO....

DD exhibits unusal language and delayed echolalia.  SAY WHAT!  Her examples of this were DD saying while looking at me, "Sorry, mama accident," when she would knock over the testing materials like blocks or the shapes they had her sort.  The Dr. said that she didn't display any variety in her language when apologizing.  The delayed echolalia example was even more puzzling to me.  While playing with the ADOS toys and the assistant person DD would talk about her favorite TV show..."Toot and Puddle"  she was always saying something about Dr. Hasong doing something... parts of it were unintelligble.  It wasn't in response to a question, more like she was trying to tell the fellow about an experience and was relating it to the space ship...maybe she was talking about the one where they went to space camp.  i can't always understand her either.  She did keep coming back to it, or talking about some of the other characters while playing.  I don't know what to make of this either.

So, we were wrapping all of this up and I asked "Well, what do you think we should be doing?"  The Dr. said, "OT, speech, and she needs to go to pre-school."  So, bascially what we have been doing and we are still trying to find a pre k for DD since she is not quite PT yet.  I asked if we needed to be doing ABA or Floortime.  The Dr. said, "No, I don't think it will really help in DD's situation."  WHAT!

Should we get a 3rd opinion?  Do you think DD falls on the spectrum?  I don't know what to think. I don't even have a gut reaction anymore.  I don't know what else to do at this point.  Is it a big deal if DD has the ASD label and isn't?  Should I try to find someone to give her ABA?  I feel lost and confused.  I hope someone was able to make it this far....