Holistic Moms

I am a small town girl. I love watching “The Walking Dead “ and “Glee” , scrapbooking, playing volleyball ,cooking , playing silly things with my daughter, going on walks with my dad, singing in the car, shopping, and going on Date nights with my husband.  I am about as normal as someone can get right? (I am sure that is up for some debate) I hold and embrace many titles:  Daughter, Mrs. Haggerty, MOM.  As a special needs mother I have come to gain a few more important titles such as  , advocate, therapist, taxi driver, insurance coordinator, scheduler, personal assistant, nurse, cook , nutritionist.  Recently I have gained a new tittle that I wasn’t so proud of …….. Holistic mom.

Holistic mom! Come on! Holistic moms are …… WEIRD! We have had many different opportunities to meet other parents of children with autism and my husband and I concluded that autistic parents are weird and to be avoided at all costs. Most of them fell under the “holistic treatment “umbrella.  So being called a holistic mom was not a compliment or a title I wanted.  I’m not like those other autistic parents. Be careful about holistic nature because it will sneak up on you and before you know it you too will be labeled the dreaded “Holistic Mom”. Except this time like me ……. You will learn to LOVE it.

I sometimes think looking back I wish I had all the knowledge I have now when Ethan was first diagnosed with autism.  I thought I wish I had a mom who had been down that road guiding me to make better choices right off the bat. However after giving it much thought, if I today was talking to me 5 years ago, I am pretty sure the past Jenny would have ran into oncoming traffic on purpose.  It would have been way too much information to process, information that I wasn’t ready to hear. We are all on our own journey.  We don’t get to the finish line by jumping over the obstacle course. Those things are truly put in our way to help us grow.  God allowed me to know what I needed to know when I needed to know it.  It may have seemed like a lot at the time but had he indulged everything I know now back then I wouldn’t have been able to handle it. When we were exploring this word Autism and what it meant and what it would mean for Ethan, such names as Jenny McCarthy were popping up and not in a good way. I am ashamed to say that back then I thought she was crazy for thinking metal fillings in the mother may play a part in the onset of autism. We were still relying on doctors to tell us what we needed. We thought they knew what they were doing.  Over the years we have been let down greatly by modern medicine.  Our first detour off the modern medicine train came from another mom giving us Jenny McCarthy’s book Louder than words. I will say, I didn’t want to read it. My husband read it and suggested I do the same. I told him “Jenny McCarthy is weird; her son is not like our son”. But Tommy insisted I read it and I am so glad I did. When reading her book, I got to listen to her defend her reasons for saying the things she did.  It was no longer the media silencing her and making her out to be this crazy person. What she said really made sense.  So at age 3 we put Ethan on a Gluten free Casein free diet. Our friend did a lot of GFCF cooking research and came over and spent the whole day cooking and stocking our freezer of food that Ethan could eat. I remember the first time we bought rice milk and watching him drink it thinking “okay he is going to start talking now “. Sadly that is not how it happened. Ethan to this day is still nonverbal at age 6 but the diet did help in subtle ways like less eczema, more concentration and more eye contact.  After reading that book we went on to her next book, which led to internet research like no ones business. We started trying all the supplements that all the other parents tried and eventually made an appointment with a MAPS doctor.  Our pediatrician was no longer able to help us as every answer to our questions was “he’s autistic, it’s part of the deal”.  Our MAPS doctor knew all about autism, all about Ethan’s symptoms before we did. The red cheeks and ears, the bumps behind his arms, his posture, his pain tolerance, his inability to distinguish between hot and cold.  So if you have a child with a disease that no one knows the cause or the cure who are you going to trust? The pediatrician who has no answers and no hope or the doctor who knows all about your son and wants to look outside the textbook box for answers? I had asked a lot of questions when Ethan was born about vaccine safety to his Pediatrician but did no research of my own. As parents who don’t vaccinate their children were usually homeschool freaks so the pediatricians wouldn’t steer me wrong, I mean they are doctors right? I lost all faith when Ethan was accidently given an extra shot at his 9 month well check that he was not due for. So much for the safety of the vaccines. So for years I would always said “I don’t know what causes autism, but I will always wonder if that shot had anything to do with it “I thought that would give my conjecture but also put it as if not set in stone so no one could argue with me for my own beliefs that I wasn’t pushing on anyone. I no longer feel the need to silence what I feel caused Ethan’s autism. I have done some research on it and my belief is that some children are genetically predisposed to having autism and get pushed over the edge with the environmental toxins that this society has made, such as too many vaccines, the pesticides we eat, the mercury in our mouths … so on and so forth.  In ten year’s time autism went from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 88 and 1 in 50 for school age kids.  We have done this to our society and  to our community.  

Ethan suffers greatly for several years now with GI issues despite the gluten free casein free diet. I thought to myself this isn’t working, we aren’t going to do this anymore and within a week off the diet we can see his body revolt against him. So why wasn’t it helping the GI issues? We did some allergy testing and found out Ethan has a potato allergy. I thought at first, “great no French fries”, only to find out there was a lot more to it than that. Like every gluten free product and four we were using contained potato starch. Well no wonder it wasn’t helping his GI issues! After we removed potato from his diet as well as the gluten, casein and soy low and behold Ethan (the pickiest eater on the planet) was willing to eat vegetables, rice, beans, and noodles. He has such a healthy diet now. I had heard this from other parents that when their diet gets in check they won’t crave the carbs so much and eat healthier ( another crazy thing holistic moms said), I mean they didn’t know my stubborn son there is no way he will ever eat (  fill in the blank). But he did!  We have started buying more organic, and altered our children’s vaccine schedule.  I make a lot of my own cleaning products, I don’t buy food from the box and if I had a yard I would have my own garden. At a recent first appointment with a GI doctor I was ridiculed and made to feel like a holistic weirdo because we take supplements, do GFCF and saw a MAPS doctor. I left crying and upset.  This doctor was a real piece of work! How dare he assume I am a crazy holistic mom just because I do ……. Wait a minute is that a bad thing after all?  My kids eat food not genetically modified and covered in pesticides, they aren’t filled with live virus’ that kill their stomach bacteria, and we aren’t exposing our kids to more toxins than necessary.  So yes, drum roll please…………. I AM a crazy holistic mom! And darn proud of it. I will no longer take anyone’s word as GOD.  I will listen and do my research and find out for myself! I will not take no for an answer and I will not let someone tell me what’s best for my child.  Don’t be afraid to go against the grain… Literally! J  So holistic yes, crazy not at all. We don’t rub crystals on our kids, or chant over them, or take them across the world to see horse Indians. Which is all fine if that is what works for your child. But in our own way who am I to criticize those parents , I put Epsom salts in Ethan’s bath ( crystals) , I pray over him  ( chants) and I drive him across the state to see the best doctors I can find.  So new frame of thinking, hey whatever works for you! You can be weird, you can be holistic but you are not weird because you’re holistic. Embrace it!