Healing My Daughter

The unhappiest child I ever met

My daughter was born weighing 10lbs 2oz after the labour from hell. Within 5 minutes of her being born, she was given trimethoprim, an antibiotic. She didn’t have any infection, but was considered to be at risk from infection. She continued to take this antibiotic every day for 6 years. It failed to prevent infection, so on top of this, she had another 20 courses of antibiotics before she was 6 years old.

She received her early vaccinations on time. At age 6 months, she was constantly regurgitating small amounts of her feed, I thought this was normal. She was a poor sleeper. She had protested profusely at being put onto bottled milk when I returned to work.

At age 12 months she began to walk around the furniture and was babbling and pointing. At age 13 months she had her MMR. She started to scream later that day, and screamed for a week. She then developed diarrhoea, she stopped walking and she stopped babbling. This all happened within a matter of days. The diarrhoea continued up to 8 times a day, her abdomen blew up until it was severely distended, and liquid poo would run down her legs.

At age 2 years she was vacant, glazed, detached, very wobbly, she screamed constantly, she had poor thin hair and nails that didn’t grow, dry flaky skin, bleeding lips, head sweating, she was white as a sheet, she over-salivated, had absence seizures, cried or screamed constantly and did not sleep a wink. She was the unhappiest child I ever met.

Self-harming and aggression not autism, but signals of pain

The worst thing to cope with was the aggression and her self harming. She still has scars on her head where she would wallop her head into radiators again and again until her forehead would split open and bleed. This was clearly a response to pain. Any child who visited the house would be attacked and injured. She drew blood several times from other children, she would head-butt them and hit them.

I took her to the doctor several times to ask for help, and I was told that she would grow out of ‘toddler diarrhoea’ and that self harming was just a phase. During one visit, she destroyed the doctor’s office, and he said, ‘she’ll grow out of it’.

Well, she didn’t grow out of it. I knew then that the doctors wouldn’t help me, so I set out on my quest to find out why she was so PHYSICALLY ill. The fact that her development was now very delayed, and her behaviour so abnormal was almost irrelevant, because I knew she was so desperately ill, and that she would only improve mentally when she felt well in her body.

Feeling shattered and drained

To cut a very long story short, we did try lots of things that didn’t help her at all. It is such an important message that if what you try doesn’t work for your child, do please try something else, because all children respond to different things. The Thinking Autism website will guide you through the different options available.

My daughter finally responded to the Vitamin K protocol. When I found this protocol, you have to understand how desperately ill she was. Her diarrhoea had now persisted for 5 years, she had developed rickets, her teeth were see-through grey, she had constant rashes, her aggression was awful, she still didn’t sleep, she was incontinent of urine and faeces, she had terrible language delay and she continued to self harm. She was unable to learn.

I was shattered, drained and did not have the energy to deal with her. She had a full time one to one aid at school, to stop her harming other children. I would sleep while she was at school. A lot of people had stopped visiting, and I never went out.

Just before starting the Vitamin K protocol, I had started her on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), in an effort to improve her distended abdomen and diarrhoea. I had taken stool specimens and sent them for analysis privately, and I knew she was riddled with parasites and streptococcal bacteria in her gut.

This diet was to correct this abnormal overgrowth, and allow her gut to recolonise with beneficial bacteria, which is the basis of everyone’s immune system. She started responding to this diet almost immediately, and continued to make small improvements. The diet, specific to Autism, is available from Amazon in a book called: ‘Gut and Psychology Syndrome’, by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride.

Finally some answers for my daughter

This is a GUT HEALING diet, it is not just an exclusion diet, it will actually allow the gut to repair itself and recolonise. So we had already started something positive when we introduced the Vitamin K protocol. And then finally, we started to get somewhere. She responded quickly and immediately to the Vitamin K theory of autism, also known as the fat soluble vitamin protocol. Please note that even though I constantly refer to vitamin K, it is actually vitamin K2 that we use, and definitely not vitamin K1.

The protocol assumes that the child has the following conditions, and works on them all in order to resolve or improve them. • Chronic low level Metabolic acidosis ( irritability, grumpiness, lethargy, passing large amounts of urine) • Hypercalcaemia (The child responds very badly to any calcium supplement, and yet has yellow/grey teeth with no calcium in them) • Hypothyroidism (poor energy levels and glycaemic control, always cold and pale) • Oxalate issues (The liver is overproducing oxalate, causing diarrhoea) • Malnutrition (Due to poor gut function).

I feel that all autistic children would benefit from this protocol, but in particular those who have a history of heavy antibiotic use in early life. The antibiotic has destroyed the beneficial gut bacteria, and therefore the child’s ability to manufacture their own vitamin K2 (it is very difficult to eat adequate amounts of vitamin K2, it is created in the gut). This lack of K2 leads to a cascade of problems.

Anyway, my daughter is now calm, contented, happy, smiling, singing and dancing. She loves animals and going to school. She is mainstreamed with no aid. She is able to learn. She has white teeth, her rickets-shaped legs are correcting themselves, she has colour in her face, her diarrhoea has gone.

After 6 months on the protocol, she suddenly gained access to her memory! This was amazing, especially as it became clear that she remembered everything about the time when she was non-verbal and so ill.

Her aggression is history, she is now thoughtful and kind.

We have never looked back since discovering this protocol, and I don’t know where we would be without it. She is a lovely girl and I’m very proud of her.

P.S. If you’ve never read ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne, you must read it.