Surprisingly, the use of the word "recovery" from autism is very controversial. I can understand being an adult or even a young teenager and having identified my autism as part of me that hearing about someone recovering from autism might be hurtful. But I don't know how else to describe what has happened to my son. The definition of autism is:

                          Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction, verbal and non-verbal communication, and by restricted, repetitive or stereotyped behavior.




To receive a diagnosis of autism, an individual must have a certain amount of behaviors that impact their everyday life. Joe did not have any of these behaviors the first year and a half of his life. But after his second round of shots at 19 months, the behaviors started popping up. The first one was hand flapping. This began just 3 days after the shots. This was known as a "stim" and is one of the repetitive behaviors that doctors use to diagnosis autism. As he began losing his ability to speak, he also had impaired verbal and non-verbal communication. He could not point or gesture. These are just two behaviors on a very long list that made it very easy for doctors to diagnose Joe with autism.




But, as we began changing his diet and adding things in like probiotics, Joe's behavior began to change. He stopped stimming and cried less. Then we made the dramatic move to the GAPS diet. He began speaking after only 5 days!! And then he learned at least 5 new words a day and some days up to 30 words! It was downright miraculous. Over the next 8 months we saw huge gains in every area of his life except sleep. So we finally started homeopathy, something that had been highly recommended to us by friends and Joe's geneticist. After only a month on homeopathy, Joe's sleep issues were greatly resolved. We all finally started getting good quality sleep and we saw more huge improvements in every area of Joe's life. And, one by one, all of Joe's autistic symptoms went away. After 4 months, we realized it had been 30 days since we had seen any autistic behavior that would warrant an autism diagnosis. After 7 months, we had another speech evaluation for him by a speech-language pathologist that had assessed him prior to homeopathy. She was amazed at the difference in him. In only 13 months, he had gone from a non-verbal child who had a 9/10 month old expressive-receptive speech/communication level to a four year old's level! She wanted to know what we had done and we shared with her about the GAPS diet and the aperture prescribing homeopathy. She asked about what different therapies we had done and we shared with her that we had stopped all his speech and occupational therapies prior to starting the GAPS diet. She was sure we must have been doing speech work with him ourselves even though we never do structured learning with Joe. We just talk to him like a typical child!




So, all I know is that my child was classified as having autism based on behaviors he exhibited. Now that those behaviors are gone, he no longer meets the criteria to be diagnosed with autism. To me, that is recovery from autism. I have heard many adults with autism say that their autism is a gift to them and I think autism must take many forms. For our family, autism meant the inability to communicate with each other which caused a huge amount of frustration for everyone, but mostly Joe. He would cry constantly so I can say that I don't think it was a gift to him. He never seemed happy whereas now he seems like the happiest little boy in the world. He is so engaged and loves us to participate in everything he does. He is an absolute joy and we are thrilled to be his parents.




So please, friends, don't ever give up hope! Don't accept that something called a lifelong disorder that is causing your family pain has to be forever! We didn't and we worked hard and it was worth every drop of sweat and penny spent.

I've wanted to write this for so long but I have no idea where to start! Let's see... My beautiful, handsome son was born in August of 2010. He arrived almost a full two weeks late and after 3 failed inductions I finally agreed to a c-section (something I had adamantly not wanted!). As the doctor pulled him out of my belly he actually grabbed onto the forceps and wouldn't let go. Everyone in the room laughed and it was a glimpse of his strength and determination to come. He had no desire to come out of hotel Mama. 

The weeks and months after his birth were awful. He cried 12+ hours a day. He refused to sleep anywhere except in someone's warm arms. He only slept in 40 minute increments. It was exhausting and overwhelming and I knew something wasn't right. I kept taking him into his pediatrician who kept assuring me he was in perfect health and this was just colic. The pediatrician and nurses said I just needed to let him cry it out, but that seemed absurd to me considering he cried in my arms 12 hours a day already. This kid did not get cried out. Finally at 5 months old after he had cried all night long without sleeping I called the pediatricians office in tears when they opened the next morning. Our regular pediatrician wasn't in but I could see the dr on call. She was amazing! She listened and she validated that as my child's mother I knew best what was normal and what wasn't. She said we wouldn't stop until we figured out what was going on. 

She recommended probiotics which I had tried but they take many weeks to really help so I put that on the list. She asked me what I thought was going on and I suspected silent reflux so we tried a reflux med.   It didn't help. She said we could try another one and this one helped tremendously. Of course as time went on he fought the medication more and more. 

I stopped the medication for a brief time and he did fine without it! Apparently the probiotic was doing its job. We kept up with the probiotic for another few months and when he turned 1, we stopped. I didn't know it at the time but everyone should always be getting probiotics into their diet. You can do this with supplements or with probiotic rich food and drinks like kombucha, kefir, yogurt, sauerkraut, and more!

Anyways, Joe's gut issues were not over. Stopping the probiotics and feeding him a standard American diet left him vulnerable to more issues. When he received his first vaccination around 1 year old he stopped talking 3 days later. He didn't say one word for three months! His pediatrician assured me this was normal as he was working on a different skill. So when he started talking again at 15 months old I thought she was right. By 18 months he had 30 words, could count to 12 and recognized half the alphabet. He was a little genius! So it was heartbreaking when he had his second round of shots at 19 months and started losing his ability to speak. It was a fast decline of skills with a huge increase in crying over the next few months. He was diagnosed with autism at just 2 years of age when he had lost all his ability to speak and couldn't even use his own hands to work his iPad. 

Although this story may sound very sad, I assure you it has a happy ending. The journey to get to the happy ending was not easy but it was absolutely worth it. I'll write about it on this blog! So welcome!