Our Unhealthy Past

Many of you know that we have struggled with LJ's health since her birth in 2009.

Here is a little recap of what has happened with her health:

a couple days old

At Birth
LJ, our firstborn, was born at 5 lbs. 14 1/2 oz. and 19" long. I had been induced at what they said was 38 weeks even though it was full term according to my cycle dates. I had been contracting for over 3 weeks. After I was induced, I still had a 3-4 hour labor. I had back problems during pregnancy and could barely walk, hence the induction. At birth her hips were loose, but that resolved within her first day. We waited a little while for her first bowel movement and wet diapers were not frequent initially. At 48 hours, LJ spiked a temperature and was sent to the NICU. Immediately she got a spinal tap and an IV with antibiotics for 24 hrs. From the very beginning she wasn't very good at latching and so we struggled with nursing. (Looking back I think the fever was due to poor eating and I wish I would have told them to supplement a little formula to get us started.) She also wanted to feed 45-60 minutes, which soon wore down my back and sent me into emergency back surgery when she was 4 weeks old.

NICU

 
NOTE: all vaccinations were given on time!

Early On
At 3 weeks old, she transitioned to the bottle. Unable to keep regular formula down, she went right to a soy formula. We had to watch her weight constantly as she was labeled with Failure to Thrive. (Oh if I could just talk to earlier self to help with this diagnosis.) She had baby acne right away and that lasted for a while. She also developed bad diaper rashes and eczema. She also could not eat a normal volume of milk. Projectile vomiting and arching was common at feeds. We had to try to keep her calm.

3 months old and just out of NB clothes

Even at 7 mos she could only take 3 oz of milk at a time. We charted everything she took in. We would do a happy dance if we got in 18-19 oz. in ONE DAY! (If this had not been my firstborn, I would have been a sore mess knowing that a normal baby gets 28-32 oz. a day! ) Often, LJ would refuse to eat any of her bottle. I would force it, offer it every 10 min, and often rock her as I wept. I tried to stay calm. I prayed and sang as much as I could. When she wasn't eating, she was gnawing her fist in hunger, but knowing that her tummy would hurt she would still refuse.

One nurse would ask if she had Down's. I tried to be gracious but my heart hurt. Not only was feeding my new baby so stressful, but my back kept me in constant increasing pain. One orthopedic doctor would tell me... "ehh, she'll eat when she's hungry". My pediatrician was very helpful but she didn't have answers. She kept ruling out things... but looking back a lot is so clear if only someone would have known what to look for.

I finally got a brain around 5-6 mos and took a video of a normal feed. I was so frustrated and overwhelmed that I thought... let's make these people see how difficult it is! What a brilliant idea! She was immediately diagnosed with silent reflux. (Clue: If a baby refuses to eat, cries, gnaws their fist, and eats better when they are asleep... REFLUX! Boy do I wish I would have known that. ALSO... wet burps... yep not normal! That's reflux too!) The answer they gave was Prevacid! It didn't work at all so we went off at 10 mos. (Honestly many other parents I have met with that have tried it have not had any success with it!)

Rice cereal was given in each bottle to try to weigh down the milk to keep it in her tummy. This did help her eat more regularly and kept the milk down more... but it still didn't fix anything.

7 mos old. Happy Valentine's Day!

Starting Solids 
The norm was to start solids at 4 mos, but we waited until 7 mos. and kept the bottle until age 2. We started with proteins right away. At age 10 mos she had an MRI done. Around age 11 mos, we went to a pediatric specialist in Indy and even consulted a dietician. It finally felt like we would get some help. They ordered her a Pediasure equivalent in soy form called Bright Beginnings and a powdered fatten-er called Duocal.They also ordered a Feed Study at this point because of her bad gag reflex. All came back normal.

The dietician actually made things worse :( She at first wanted us to push dairy even though she was off dairy. We had to remind her no dairy... Then, she said well push margarine or butter in everything to beef up calories... DUH that's dairy... but not thinking we did that for a little while until I got a clue and I just went back to plain food.

Thankfully LJ showed great development! In fact, she was checked out by 2 First Steps therapists at 2 separate times and passed with flying colors. They were a huge encouragement! I still remember one of them saying, "your job is to offer the food and her job is to eat it". This really helped me to have more peace at eating times! What great advice.

16 mos.

Making Some Progress
At 16 mos, LJ finally made the chart! She was 3% of the national average! I did a happy dance because she gained 3 lbs in 3 months! That was like super awesome for her! I definitely think most of her progress was from the Duocal. She continued with the recommended vaccinations and ended up with chicken pox around this time.  She also had antibiotics for slight pneumonia a few months later. 

20 mos old

At 20 mos, I finally started making a correlation to food allergies! Not sure what took so long... no one had even suggested it. I had given her Benadryl off and on for what I thought was seasonal allergies... but NEVER THOUGHT OF FOOD ALLERGIES! Geesh! Anyways, I saw a clear reaction (runny, itchy nose, sneezing right after eating at a restaurant) on our way to see a Pediatric GI Specialist and I gave her Benadryl which helped immediately. The GI specialist helped us confirm a suspicion of allergies. She also informed us that reflux is eczema on the inside of the body so it made sense that she had both. (IF ONLY SOMEONE WOULD HAVE SAID THE WORDS AUTOIMMUNE!)

At 23 mos, she had an endoscopy. She had some irritation, but other than that, nothing came back abnormal. She did suggest an allergist at this point, but being that she was so young we didn't want to do the prick tests. Instead we eliminated foods and watched that no dairy or eggs got into her diet. She made VAST IMPROVEMENTS AT THIS POINT!

2 years old--- starting to plump up for sure!

More Progress
LJ continued to have progress. Taking away the bottle was soooo hard at 2 years old. She would only take milk in a bottle and water or juice in a cup. There was no forcing her to take soy milk at this point. When she dropped the bottle, she was done! I remember our pediatrician saying... she is the most strong willed child she had ever witnessed in her practice; strong willed like her own daughter :) We tried soy milk Popsicles, chocolate flavored, and even smoothies... eventually we gave up and just offered it to her several times a week and sneaking it her oatmeal, which was a staple of hers. Instead we pushed V8 fusion juice to at least boost her calcium in take. At about age 2 1/2 she finally started drinking it on her own.

over 2 years old signing "cat" in ASL

 
Recent Struggles
She was growing very well... still a little short in stature, but the food allergies were definitely a major factor in her growth. As soon as we eliminated them, she did so much better. She also developed Urticaria at some point. Basically you break out in hives from extreme cold or heat. Thank you google! She had always complained of her bath being too warm and had broken out in hives here and there. But now it was more pronounced. 

Summer she turned 4

At age 4 1/2 she suddenly started major diarrhea. We eliminated all of the top 8 allergens to try to work it out. She got better, but no true resolve. After blood work and stool samples, we were off to the allergist at age 5. After prick testing we found that she has sooo many environmental allergies, but only one food allergy showed positive, walnuts. So... we tried introducing foods again. Wheat... not good. Peanuts... fine. Soy... fine. They called wheat an intolerance. Such a foreign word to me made me go researching again.

Several friends threw around a new word to me... leaky gut. That led me to GAPS. So that's where we are now. Suddenly so much is making sense, which is great because our third born has developed a dairy allergy and eczema! 

THIS MOMMA WANTED ANSWERS... 5 years was too long to wait! Hopefully our journey can give you answers that you may be searching for!

Are long time prayers being answered? Come join our journey... hopefully a journey to healing for our family...

Vaccine Research for My Family

A friend of mine, who is a nurse practioner, lent me a book called

"What Your Doctor May NOT Tell You About Children's Vaccinations"

by Stephanie Cave, MD, FAAFP with Deborah Mitchell.

You can read the first chapter here.

You can also read the U.S. vaccine schedule here.

Now...before I go any farther, let me just set you straight on my intentions. I sought out to read this book out of a desire to learn more about the risks associated with vaccines so my husband and I could make a wise choice about vaccines for our children. With several family members having auto-immune diseases (MS, Parkinson's Disease, diabetes, etc.), I wondered if that put my children more at risk for complications from vaccinations. I also wondered if there was any proof of some people's opinion that autism could be a result of vaccinations. Obviously not all children have auto-immune diseases, including autism, so I wanted to find out if there was truly a correlation, if any. This post is just my opinion based on my findings and our family's personal choices about vaccinations. I am not a doctor or nurse, just a teacher at heart.

First of all, I find it odd that our society accepts and even pushes organic products for the health of our families, yet we pop pills for everything and anything, and inject so many different things into our bodies without much question. I believe many parents wonder at the hepititis b vaccine within the first several hours of birth and the alarming 6 vaccinations our little 2 month old children get at their second check-up. I mean just to a normal person it seems WAY excessive. BUT...we trust our doctors and their opinions and just do it anyways. That's what we did with our first child. Honestly, looking back we were so overwhelmed by her health problems (failure to thrive) that we never really looked into it.

Luckily, I don't believe my daughter's vaccinations have had any affect on her health... except for one thing. After she received the chicken pox vaccine (around age 15 months) she got a small case of them. You can read the experience in the post "An Uninvited Guest" and "She's on the Chart!"  I soon found that MANY parents had experienced the same thing. This was serious for us though as every ounce of weight mattered to her health until age 2. This vaccine set us back 2 weeks in eating. My pediatrician basically said that the vaccine didn't cause her getting them...like the flu-shot, am I right? Ummm hello! Seriously I can't even count the parents that said that their child had the same thing happen to them! In my mind it just goes to show that there seems to be a gap in logic out there about vaccinations. I'm not saying that doctors are dufuses or anything...just that vaccinations seem to be trusted a little too much. I will also stop to say that I LOVE my pediatrician. She was in the armed services for a while. She is a vaccine-aholic :) but I do trust her opinions in many areas.

After reading this book, I am overwhelmed by the lack of education that is given to us parents and certainly the lack of research that has gone into some ingredients found in vaccines. I agree with the author that the reason that more education is not given about vaccines is because many parents would opt not to give some, most, if not all vaccines. Some of it is just common sense and now I have a book that gives me statistics and information on these vaccines to help me make an informed decision for my family. I am so thankful.

So my opinion about this book. I am a teacher at a heart, so I love reading statistics and finding my opinion in a topic whether I disagree or agree with something. This book was great at explaining each vaccine: what it is given for, what types of ingredients go into it, risks and positives. HOWEVER, I caution that this book, again in my opinion, is very one way. When I started this book, I basically felt I needed the other side of the coin so to say because I feel like medical professionals make us feel like our children will die if they don't get all of their vaccines. I wanted to know true risks of not getting them and getting them. This book sometimes made me feel like my child could die or be so severly hurt by vaccines. I did not like feeling like that, but I took it all in to make my balanced decision remembering both sides.

ONE KEY FACT that I really hung my decision on was the fact that children do not start producing bile until 6 months of age. For those of you trying to remember what bile is (honestly needed that myself), bile is produced by the liver to break down fats. It also helps to rid your body of toxins in your body. So when we put these vaccines in our little babies, they don't have bile to help rid the toxins from their bodies. It would also seem that our babies have a very weak immune system which is why they get their antibodies from their mother's milk...and as the baby grows up, the milk gradually decreases in it's antibodies. Now, my doctor would say that the vaccines have barely anthing in them...in fact she said that they are significantly lower doses than when my parents were growing up.

ONE LAST KEY FACT came from the significant changes in our children after the altering of the vaccine schedule/reccomendations in 1994. Autism, asthma, diabetes have all been on the rise. Plus those of us in the teaching field would tell you that kids are much different these days. Many are hyper and hard to contain at times. This is concerning! There may not be a correlation, but something is going on in our society. The main difference in the schedule was the Hep-B vaccine. Knowing that France has banned it since 1998 because of it's links to MS and other neurological diseases...makes me stay FAR AWAY FROM THAT ONE! Besides...realizing that Hep-B is an autoimmune disease that is passed by blood, semen, and other bodily fluids and that my family is not a carrier...makes me wonder why so many people get it without thought. I don't plan on my little baby boy at a couple of hours of age getting a tattoo, getting acupuncture, etc. If he was going for a blood tranfusion or had other risks, then certainly it would be a consideration. On top of that, I plan on homeschooling for a while...so this decision may need to be weighed if I decide to send them to school or daycare.

I believe that looking at your family's healthy history is the way to go in this area of immunizations. Honestly, knowing that MS and diabetes are very prevalent in my family, makes me more cautious with immunizations. So...here was our decision. Based on the cases seen in my dr's office with whooping cough and that the Amish community in our area does see cases of whooping cough as well...we did give James the pertusis, tetanus, diptheria (DTaP) vaccine at 3 mos. This was a hard decision for me based on the earlier finding about the bile. I actually cried when he was so unhappy just a few hours later praying that we had made the right decision. I believe it was for my family. At 6 months, I will reevaluate what may be next for my little guy as far as vaccines. At this point I don't plan on getting the boosters for the DTaP. At the advice of my dr. we did eliminate the rotavirus and the hep-b at this time. She did want us to get, I think it was the Pneumococcal, 3 weeks later, but I decided against it. Even though she is all about vaccines, she was accepting that my decision was to take it slower and eliminate some of them altogether so this made me feel I was making a good balanced decision....because again I appreciate her opinions and thoughts very much.

So there you have it...all my opinions and some of my findings. I realize that some of you reading this may be more on the every vaccine on time route, others on the no-vaccine list and then some may be in the middle like me. Whatever your choice for your family, I just pray that you make your decision by educating yourself on your family history and what each vaccine is all about. All we can do is trust the Lord and take in all of the information we have and do our best! Feel free to leave an opinion or other information you have found in your studies in the comments below! It is great when we can learn from each other.