This is new for me

Blogging is not new for me, but being personal about Jake to this degree will be - online at least to strangers and even to family. This blog I am creating to help go through a new chapter of trying some biomed treatments with Jacob. I want to give you as brief a story as I can to start out and then I'll explain why we have chosen biomed.

Jacob is 7 years old now, about to be 8 at the end of May. He is the second born child of four boys. He is bright beyond belief. He is sweet, kind, and funny. He also has Autism. He was officially diagnosed as Autistic when he was 4 years old. Before that doctors, specialists and schools labeled him as "Developmentally Delayed with Autistic Tendencies". The labels don't really matter. Jake is Jake.
When he was about 15months old he lost his language, his interaction with us and went inside himself to some place only he knew. The screaming began. The word "tantrum" can not even describe what some of his earliest meltdowns were. He banged his head on the floor. He rocked and rocked and rocked his way to comfort. We went through the Birth to Three program in our state eventually receiving a therapist/teacher in our home to work with Jake. He attended speech and occupational therapies until we could no longer afford them. He went into the ESE PreK in our school district. The first year of PreK he was put into a VE (varying Exceptionalites) classroom with a teacher who should not have been teaching ESE kids. After countless issues there he was put into a Speech and Language based class full of Autistic and Down Syndrome children with a phenomenal teacher who made some wonderful break-throughs with him!!! Into an Moderate Level Autistic Kindergarten class with a first year ESE teacher who could not handle his behavioral problems. We paid for a VBA specialist to go into the school to work with the teacher and went to behavioral therapy sessions ourselves to help. The VBA therapist saw Jake in our home as well for awhile until affording that was no longer feasible. And then finally after some rough teachers and years in the school district, we were BLESSED with his current teacher for the last two years who has extensive training and experience working with children with Autism. She has helped bring out so much of Jacob that he had hidden for so long.

So why now are we finally attempting a biomed approach in his treatment??? Well, vaccinations were never a concern of mine triggering Autism in Jacob. He did not have his vaccinations on a normal schedule and did not receive certain controversial shots prior to us losing him. He was always on the normal developmental curve but at the latter end of it. Hind sight of course is 20/20. Looking back on it now I can say that he was always so fussy from about 10 months on, that I should have pushed our pediatrician more with his lack of language development, I should have been more proactive with those concerns that my mom senses knew were just not right. Then there were things I looked at thinking, oh he was just a bit behind where his brother was at this age not wanting to compare the two because all babies develop differently. And that was my mantra for quite some time before I realized something more was there. An underlying something.

When you first hear "Autism" there is the time when you stress about how, why, and what???? I still go over the differences between my pregnancy at that time with Jake in comparison to his three neuro-typical (as they say) brothers. The differences - I had insulin dependent gestational diabetes complete with a full diabetic diet consisting of many artificial sweeteners, Jake was our only child born in NJ (who now has a 1 in 94 children rate of autism!!!), and Jake was the only child to receive shots at the hospital after birth before discharge.

We have struggled through affording Jake's needed therapies to help with his development. At this time he receives limited amounts of both Speech and OT at school as well as an ABA approach model in his classroom. We provide his "therapy" at home through models we learned, info and instructional suggestions from his teacher and therapists at school. This is NOT our ideal way of helping him but it is all we can do without the insurance coverage for what he needs or state assistance. Our state has ridiculous waiting lists for service funding waivers - FIVE to TEN years!!!! We've tried to relocate but jobs are not available and a large family of six is hard to afford in states that have excellent services for Jacob. Had we known Jake was autistic before we left NJ - we never would have relocated to FL. We left the best to relocate to one of the worst states providing services to special needs children. That's irony for you.

Jake is currently at a peak and although we always wind up with a few steps forward and then a few steps back with him we want to see what else we can try now to push forward. I have always read research related to Autism but more and more I have been reading recent research on things specifically pertaining to Jake's circumstances and want to see if there is any connection for Jake to food allergies, toxins in his system, etc so that is why we are going this route now.

Please bear with me while I try to work through this. I do not want nor need political or religious issues regarding our choices or badgering about why we waited so long to try certain things. I realize that there are hundreds of ways we could have went about treatment for Jake. We did the best we could with what we had. Our path has already been started and going back to shoulda, coulda and woulda's will not help in going forward. I am trying to maintain a POSITIVE mindset as much as I can (which for me is very difficult some days) so I need reinforcement, experienced suggestions and support more than the commando parents who have a tendency to rant and rave instead of educate and assist. I realize that some of my posts will seem extremely elementary but I am starting out on this and we all need to start somewhere. Hopefully I can also help someone who considers this or needs to know more as I go along.