My pregnancy with Jacob was completely normal. I was 22 years old when I had him, and his father was 36. I didn’t have any complications at all. He was born 3 days late and was a little jaundiced right after birth, but besides that he was 8 pounds 3 ounces of perfect baby boy.

He was hitting all his milestones right on target (sitting up, walking,  talking). He had a pretty big vocabulary for a 1 year old and I enjoyed taking him for walks and listen to him label things like bird, car, and cloud. Around that time his father and I split up. I took Jake with me and stayed at my parent’s house until I could find a place of my own. During my stay there I took Jake for his MMR vaccinations when he was 15 months old. A few days later he was in his own little world.

I know there is no evidence of vaccines and autism. I have no idea if it has anything to do with autism, I’m just telling you my story the way it happened.

My happy talkative little boy was gone. In his place was a boy who would just sit and stare. He stopped saying all his words. He stopped looking at me. He stopped giving me that beautiful smile. At times he was totally emotionless. At his 18 month check up I told his doctor what was going on, and we were referred to Early Intervention. They did wonderful with him. Those women had some serious patience because all Jake would do would scream while they tried to work with him. I watched with tears in my eyes behind a one-way mirror.

During this time I started a relationship with my boyfriend Ed. He’s been a huge support for both me and Jake. You can read more about him and all he has done for us here.

We took Jake to Penn State Children’s Hospital in Hershey where he got the diagnosis of autism. We pretty much already knew it, but it’s still a punch in the stomach to actually hear a doctor say it. When I got home that night I went right online to see what I could do for my son. I came across the GF/CF diet. I figured I’d give it a try.  I asked the doctor and she said “It wont do anything, but it can’t hurt anything either.”.

Again, some people have success with the diet and others do not. If you want to try it, ask your child’s doctor. I will go into more detail about the diet and our experience with it in another post.

Within a week, Jake was no longer waking up screaming in the middle of the night. His red ears and cheeks were gone. After a couple of months on the diet I heard Jake’s first word after almost a year of silence. “Toof” he said, while pointing to his teeth. I’ll never forget it. We were in the Walmart parking lot when it happened. He was on the diet for about a year when we started introducing gluten back in. He no longer got a reaction from it and then we added some milk based products.

He slowly started to say more words. He started going to school in an autistic support program that our school district has. We’ve been through ups and downs with him, but now he’s almost 11 years old and in 5th grade. We put off medication as long as possible, but it became increasingly hard for him to focus in school, so now he is on Vyvanse. He’s in mainstream classes with his TSS by his side.

I’ll be telling you more of our story in other posts during this month.

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