Our Piece Of The Puzzle

Everyone has there own struggles day after day, because there is no such thing as a perfect life. We each have our own strengths and weaknesses.


I have just started to share with people, that my daughter has autism, or rather shall I say she has an autistic classification. What this means is our local birth-three has determined my daughter has autistic quality's and therefor they may offer her the same services as if she had a diagnosis from a doctor (which she will get in January) I have not always felt I wanted others to know that Gabby showed these signs, not because I was ashamed of her but rather because I believe people have a general stereotype for autism... I didn't want people to look at her as another "autistic kid". The reason I have chosen to share our journey is I hope I can help raise awareness about autism, and show that autism is not a one size fits all.


Here is our story..........


Miss Gabby was born in January on 2009, when she was born she looked as perfect as any other newborn. With that being said I knew within hours of her being born that "something" wasn't right. I had no reason to feel this way, but it was just a gut feeling. Gabby had really bad acid reflux, she would vomit any formula I gave her, and she never slept very long. As time went on I started to notice all she did was cry, the doctor claimed it was colic. As she grew a little more I noticed she never really had any interest in her toys. She seemed to hit all her developmental milestones on time and the doctor said she would out grow her "temper", and crying fits. As time progressed I noticed she really had not attempted to speak like my other girls did. People assured me she was fine and I shouldn't compare one child to the other, "she is just a late talker". I started to believe I was looking for something that wasn't there. I spoke to her doctor time after time but nothing became of it. At this point she was 16 months old, she could walk and she would say about 2-3 words. I would take her into a store and she would scream and scream, birthday parties, restaurants all the same thing. Why did everything feel like such a struggle? Why do others not seems to see what I saw? I honestly started to question my self as a mother! I went to the internet and started to research.... How I have come to LOVE google! :)
At 18 months old the "fits" had gotten worse to the point she started banging her head, everything seemed to upset her, people she didn't know terrified her (not there presence so much but rather there ability to make eye contact). Her vocabulary was up to about 5-7 words at this point, but these words were not used daily. I decided I might just be crazy but I needed help, and fast. I returned to the internet and started reaching out to other mom's of children with autism. I began to ask them if my daughter showed any of the same characteristics as their children, and she did. I then choose to contacted our local birth-three program. They come out to my home within about a week, they reassured me I hadn't completely lost my mind, they stated she did show some developmental delays. At that point I received services from them once a week, it just didn't seem to be enough help. I was so hesitant to have them test her further I didn't want to label her... what happens if she just outgrew all of this????
After my husband and I talked extensively we choose to have her tested further, this test showed that Gabby does show some signs of autism, that allowed us to have more people come out to our home up to 20 hrs a week to help her. I am so grateful because I  have a great set of people that come out and work with her 2-5 hours a day 5 days a week.
During all this I read the book by Jenny McCarthy called Louder Then Words... She spoke about autism and helping her son, she spoke about pulling him through the window of autism. I echoed those words in my head at least a dozen times a day. My daughters sign of autism are milder then some, and are not as obvious to others that have never meet her.... but they are still there. 
I will not ramble on about what my theories of autism are, I will save that for a future post. But I will add this.... I have read that some people have been able to "cure" autism and the more I research I started to believe this is so. I knew that if I was going to help my daughter to the best of my ability then this is something I was going to do. I slowly removed red and blue dyes, and high fructose sugars from her diet... the banging of the head stopped and she gained 6 words in 2 days... not bad for a child that only acquired a 15 word vocabulary which she didn't use daily. If that wasn't a sign I don't know what was. We are now removing gluten from her diet and started her on  special supplements, we bought when we took her to a  Holistic Practitioner. This practitioner has studied extensively all areas of Naturopathic Medicines, including Homeopathy, Herbal Medicine and Clinical Nutrition. A Bio Energetic Testing was done on her, a form of Electro Diagnosis, which utilizes a computer to evaluate 30 different systems of the body and is capable of testing over 13,000 bits of information in the body. I learned her gut along with so many other things were a mess in her body. I will share the supplements with you at a later time,  then I can share with you the things I believe worked and didn't work for her. I used to believe I might be able to cure autism, but the word might shows doubt and hesitation... I have neither I WILL pull my piece out of the autism puzzle! I hope to share our journey with you as we write our story of life!
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