stef. love that house. it is gorgeous! i could easily live across the street from you. we would a) bake paleo recipes b) do way too many crafts and c) do tracy every morning while k crawled on our faces and pulled our hair. sigh. that sounds too good to be true. i really miss you.
well. decided to copy you (surprise, surprise) and here is a before picture of our outdated, 80’s kitchen.
i am covered in paint. the hubs commented that i looked a bit trashy. of course, after we went to dinner and michaels and walmart and walked around town. after all that he mentioned that i had too much paint on me to look presentable. good timing j. alas, i am covered in paint because i can’t stop painting. it is addicting. every time k goes down for a nap i am painting. here is where we are so far.
getting there. going to install glass front doors on a few of them and make the cabinet above the stove a shelf for cookbooks. will be a work in progress and will keep you posted.
praising God for k’s health. ezcema is basically gone. gone! for the first time in 7 months my baby is starting to seem healthy. no spitting up, skin issues, tons of energy and babbling, interacting with us and melting our hearts. we are so thankful that God led us to all the answers to his health problems.
k went to an alternative pediatrician last week. alternative just means she is an MD open to things most traditional doctors aren’t. it was the best thing i ever did for him. she looked at me and said, “don’t you ever let someone talk you out of your gut feeling, even if it’s me or any other doctor.” she told me the formula recipe i was using was perfect and asked to keep the recipe. she referred me to a chinese herbalist for some more help for k’s digestive issues (still can’t get him to touch solid foods.) i want to share k’s story for any mommies out there who might be struggling with some of the health issues that kept me and j up at night, praying for answers.
of course, k’s story starts with me, because he grew inside me. i was recently diagnosed with a systemic candida (yeast) infection, which was six years in the making. six years of headaches, brain fog, debilitating fatigue, chronic headache and sore throat, painful periods, chronic bacterial infections, mood swings…you name it, i had it, right sis? i was a mess and all my problems were very much related…and very much related to food. in my early 20’s and j used to say he married an old lady. i needed 12 hours of sleep and still no energy. so after years of drugs and searching, i finally went to an integrative physician, who looked at my health issues as a whole. my diagnosis – candida, low vitamin d, and food intolerances. they put me on a strong probiotic (those ones at the grocery store are NOT strong enough – I take 50 billion count probiotics each night), a month’s worth of diflucan for the yeast, and 6,000 IU of vitamin d per day. one more thing – he suggested cutting out gluten. changed my life. i also took out 90% of the sugar i used to eat a day. j will tell you – i am my old self again and he is a happy man.
the problem is, candida feeds off of sugar and goes wild. women are not supposed to consume more than 6 teaspoons of added sugar per day. 6 teaspoons, people! read your labels – that is hardly any at all! i was shocked when i started looking for added sugar in my diet. and i cut it out as well as gluten and i have energy, no more mood problems, virtually don’t even notice my periods because they are so light and painless, and am excited to eat healthy because it has changed my life. one thing – it takes a few weeks to kick the cravings. don’t give in! the doctor told me my body would crave it terribly at first. oh boy, did it. but i am past that point now.
so. i was going on my merry way, literally a new woman, when i started to notice subtle changes in baby k. after his 9 month shots, he was a little different. i had been giving him one shot at once, and then on a whim decided to let them give him 2 shots to get it over with at his 9 month appointment. big mistake. then, a month later he tried a speck of egg white with dinner. we were at urgent care that night with a swollen face, ears, and hives all over. so i now knew my son had food allergies.
a week later he had slipped away from me. no more eye contact, started flapping his hands, banging his head, making high pitched sounds, wouldn’t even respond to his name. he stopped clapping, smiling, he was silent. he just stared blankly. i knew every sign of autism by heart. it was my worst fear, and it was coming true. these children typically have food allergies, and overall signs of a weakened immune system – cradle cap, ezcema, chronic fatigue and diarrhea. my son was a textbook case of it.
so i went to work. my old pediatrician had told me, when k was 2 days old, that i was panicky and worrisome and that “of course shots don’t cause autism.” so there. to which i would now say, that’s half true. they are just one piece of the puzzle. from all my research, i have found this to be true: autism is directly caused by a weakened immune system due to several factors. stunning fact: mothers with immune dysfunction (autoimmune disorders) are more likely to have autistic children. hmm. more on that here.
my son had antibiotics every 4 hours for the first 2 days of his life, the crucial time where the microflora of the digestive system is being established. what’s so important about microflora in the digestive system? Most of your immune system – my doctor told me 2/3 of it – resides in your gut – the stomach and intestines. antibiotics kill the good guy bacteria off so the bad guys can grow. k had no good guy bacteria, at least not enough, to fight the candida. everyone has it, it’s just some people have too much and it gets out of hand and you end up like me or like my baby – very sick. Allergies, asthma, and many other problems have been found to be caused by a lack of good bacteria in the gut. fascinating stuff.
so, weak immune system = overgrowth of yeast. the good bacteria coats your intestines. so when you don’t have enough, this can make your intestines permeable. not good. this is called leaky gut. this means food particles, bad bacteria, and toxins that are usually carried out of the body as waste, can leak out into the bloodstream before they are digested. hence the inability for my son to properly digest eggs. the particles leaked into his bloodstream and his body attacked, hence the hives.
long story short, k has digestive issues due to a weak immune system and leaky gut. his doctor told us that a baby grows in a sterile environment in the womb, and then inherits the beginnings of his digestive microflora from his mother during birth. well, k, i am sorry, all i had to give you was yeast. i am so sorry.
the new doctor told us his tiny body isn’t in any state to handle the toxins in vaccinations due to his compromised immunity. we will revisit the shot issue later, but for now she refuses to vaccinate him herself, because she believes we would be looking at autism for sure…and this from an MD. said she has seen it happen too many times. she said, well, the studies sure say otherwise but have you met the smiths? no? the bakers? hmm. the johnsons? she said she has seen it enough times to know what’s going on when these babies come in normal and wake up the next day anything but normal. she also told us to “follow the money” and consider how much of it is wrapped up in the business of vaccines. like i said. shots don’t cause autism. they just put toxins in a child’s body that babies like mine can’t handle as well as a perfectly healthy, candida-free baby. it’s happening every day, to more and more children. here is an interesting article about the toxins in vaccinations. and here is information on the issue of giving babies tylenol after shots… tylenol depletes glutathione, which is an amino acid responsible for detoxification. so my baby was getting shots loaded with toxins, then his body couldn’t remove them properly due to a dose of tylenol.
actress jenny mccarthy has a ton of info out there about these issues. here is her website. i love her quote on the subject (she uses a gluten-free, casein-free diet for autism, too):
People have the misconception that we want to eliminate vaccines. Please understand that we are not an antivaccine group. We are demanding safe vaccines. We want to reduce the schedule and reduce the toxins. If you ask a parent of an autistic child if they want the measles or the autism, we will stand in line for the measles. – Jenny McCarthy
here is the wonderful miracle news. the praises that we sing to jesus every night. this information is all over, that’s how i found it. what i am writing is not new, i am just another story, of another mom who went through this only to find the answers and be told she was crazy. scoffed at by doctors, nurses, friends… but here’s the thing. when you see your child in a state like that, and you make some changes and he literally comes back to you, looks at you and smiles again… you don’t need anyone to listen to you. you don’t need anyone to believe you, because you have your child back. it’s all that matters. here is what we did.
we cut out gluten, corn, milk (casein), sugar. sugar feeds yeast. it has to go, at least until the candida is under control, and even then only given sparingly. this meant no fruit for a while. people, gluten is in everything, so read the labels. we had to get k off his similac milk based formula because it had gluten and casein in it. i read a very interesting article that explains what happens to autistic children when they have milk. the casein leaks out of the gut, gets into the bloodstream, crosses the blood-brain barrier, enters the brain, and produces morphine-like effects. no wonder my child was acting so strangely.so now k gets homemade formula.
we also put k on probiotics, and the doctor prescribed him nystatin for the candida. it took 6 days. i had my son back in 6 days. we watched every day as we got those foods that were poisoning him out of his system and he came back. clapped his hands. played with me! let me read to him. i could do nothing but look up and bow down in thankfulness to the One who saved my son. i never have another thing to complain about as long as i live.
disclaimer: many will tell you diet can’t fix it. many moms have told me it doesn’t work because they have tried. i say don’t give up. i say, be fanatical and crazy and stop at nothing. sit on the computer for hours like i did, reading the success stories that give you hope. try whatever crazy foods you have to. my son was better in 6 days. but he is only 11 months old. older children most likely have much more systemic yeast infections and need more time to see healing. please do not give up. i pray for moms every night who are going through what i did. there are lots of us.
i am afraid that autism will only continue to rise. mom’s like me had poor diets and didn’t even know it. the sugar feeds the yeast, the yeast overtakes the good bacteria, and you have a systemic candida infection going on. then your child is born unhealthy from the start. EVERYONE should take a probiotic, every day of their life. we all need it because our diets are insanely horrible. that’s why the paleo diet makes you feel so great. because you cut out all the foods that are relatively new and absolutely fake – and go back to eating the diet we were designed for. our food is poisoning us and our children. one more thing – my doctor said overuse of antibiotics, NSAID’s such as aspirin, and birth control pills are the top killers of good bacteria in the body. keep away from them if you can. my chronic headaches completely disappeared when i kicked the sugar and gluten by the way. and yes, the shots are adding to the problem. but it’s just part of the puzzle. fix your diet. fix your kid’s diet. take those probiotics. get healthy so your babies will be healthy.
1 in 54 boys has autism today. why is it such a mystery? one of the clues is right under our noses, on our dinner plates.
whew. that was a novel. but that’s the story of how we lost k for a bit and got him back again. absolutely cannot wait for you to see him stef. as you would say, “he needs his tess.”
the Lord has done great things for us and we are filled with joy. – psalm 126:3
3 sisters. 