Allergies or Autism?

When Bee was a few months old she began to regress and lose the milestones she had achieved.  She didn't want to smile or laugh.  She had difficulty sitting up.  She began to have trouble rolling over.

At that point I was convinced that she had autism.  She just was "not right" in my mommy eyes.  She was nothing like my other 2 children.  Each time I asked the pediatrician about autism he would tell me with certainty that Bee was not autistic.  But I still knew something was wrong.

Once we had our food allergy diagnosis, we began eliminating all the foods that bothered Bee.  She slowly began to improve and started gaining her milestones back gradually after being so behind.  But we noticed that at first she seemed worse and there were times that we felt she would never catch up or get better.

It took months to see improvements and months to gain back her milestones and then more months for Bee to start moving forward-gaining weight, growing, eczema clearing, and her health returning.

During those months Bee's body had to slowly recover from all the damage done by foods that she was severely allergic to.  Bee had become sickly, undernourished, lethargic, and unable to fight infections.  Her body was so busy attacking all the foods that she was allergic to, it could not absorb any nutrients from anything.  She was eating but getting no nutrition.  That explained her autistic tendencies.

The healing process took time as it took more than a month for her system to be clear of any traces of her food allergens.  Once her system was detoxed, she was able to start the recovery process and start healing.  We've been able to see her body heal itself as she is fed foods that she can safely eat.  She began to gain weight and slowly start growing.  After several months she was back on the growth chart-even though she was still at the bottom.  She also recovered from her constant skin infections and was able to fight off other infections.  She was sick less often.

I never realized how much damage the wrong foods could do to a person, both physically and mentally.  We've seen Bee come full circle and become a completely different child after changing her diet.