Potty Time Diary...weak stomachs beware! :)

  Gabe is 6 years old and we have been working on #2 potty-training for over 4 years now with no success. I have heard from many parents how they so easily potty-trained their kids and got numerous dirty looks when I said, "oh yeah, tried that already." I'm sorry, but don't you think after 4 years that I've probably at least attempted to do an M&M reward system, sticker chart, book reading plan?  lol



Gabe has been # 1 trained for a few years now, so I knew it was just a matter of getting him to realize what I was asking him to do. He knew that putting his pee in the potty was acceptable, but to him poop clearly goes in your pants. DUH!  Yeah, so that was the issue. How does one get a kid with ASD to associate the "feeling" of going with putting it in the potty? We had several times where we would randomly sit him on the potty and he seemed to accidentally go a little, but then he would stop and wait it out until he could go right upstairs and poop in his pants. The worst part is that he would hold it in sometimes for 8 hours just to wait until he got home where he was comfortable. He had to be just miserable and couldn't function as well at school. I mean, who could?

Mike decided to be super dad and google out of the box things about autism and potty training and found several blog sites where moms had given their ASD kiddos pediatric enemas for several days in a row (like 5-8 days) and they just "got-it" after that. Sounds too good to be true, right?  WRONG! Worked like a charm and after about 6 or 7 days of doing the enemas, Gabe was going on his own in the potty. The most challenging part of this was figuring out when he said "potty" (he is very verbally limited) whether he was needing to go #1 or #2. So, for a while we would sit him down every time he went just in case. He now will say potty for #1 and poop for #2. Hey, I'll take it! I am just so thankful that Mike found those blogs about this because I would have never thought this could work and be so simple. I was a little terrified when he said enema because I figured Gabe would fight and scream about them, but he didn't mind them at all and showed no discomfort about getting them. I think after the first one he realized how much it cleared him out and he probably felt like a million bucks after wards!

I wanted to post our success for other moms and dads who are needing something "non-traditional" because you have tried everything else to no avail! It is so frustrating sometimes and it stinks to feel like you are alone. I hope this helps at least one other family. I know it has made our lives and Gabe's so much better in the last few months!

Pics of some NuLife samples we tried!

Us eating GFCF Spaghetti and NuLife Foods Beefy Veggy Meatballs

A Closer shot of the spaghetti and meatballs.  :)

 Gabe's favorite.....PIZZA!  He LOVED it.....we added some organic GFCF pepperonis to it. He's a meat eater.   :)

NuLife Foods

 I received an email from a very sweet lady with the company NuLife Foods. I had heard of their products through autism friends, but hadn't had a chance to try any. She offered to send a trial pack of some of their favorite, best-selling products for us to try. I am SO glad and greatful she did. They are WONDERFUL! We got two chicken burger patties, two slices of ultimate cheese pizza (using Daiya cheese), two slices of french toast, 8 squash meatballs, 8 chicken nuggets, and 4 chocolate chip cookies. Literally, everything was wonderful! Gabe loved all of it and he usually is kind of picky when trying new foods. His favorites were the cookies (of course), the pizza slices which look a lot like the school lunch pizzas (only healthy for you!), and the chicken patties. I made GFCF spaghetti and meatballs one night for dinner and it turned out wonderful. The meatballs have squash inside them hidden and they taste wonderful. I couldn't even taste the squash at all, which was surprising. 
All of their foods are gluten free, casein free, soy free, with no preservatives, no additives, etc. Guilt free eating at it's finest!  :)

The best part is that NuLife Foods has been generous enough to offer any of our readers a 10% off discount on their first order from their website!

Here is the link to the website:
http://www.nulifefoods.com/

At checkout you will enter "Gabe10" and receive 10% off. Pretty simple!  I hope you all enjoy it just as much as we did. We are customers for life now!  :)

Neglect....

Wow, we have had a busy couple of months around here. I feel like I have completely neglected this blog. Sorry, Mr. Blog site!


 In March, we started working on getting Gabe in to an ABA therapy school here and he finally got to start last Tuesday. So far, it seems to be going great. He is getting used to getting up early again and being back in to a routine, which is always good for him. He has his own therapist every day Mon-Fri and they are going to work on all of his areas of need like speech, #2 training, social skills, etc. I really think he is going to LOVE his therapist. She is in her mid-20's and seems so sweet. It also helps that she is a cute blonde. ;)  Gabe loves girls already!

In April, my big "not-so-little"boy turned 6 years old. Wow, how the time flies when you are battling autism! We had his party at a bounce house place that he LOVES and invited a few friends and family to join us. Gabe had a blast and jumped his little heart out.  It was cute when a kid from his class showed up (he has autism, too) and ran up to Gabe and jumped in his seat with him and they just sat there and hugged each other. Gabe was so happy that he came and they ran around together the rest of the night.  :)

 In May, we started Gabe on a couple of new supplements in hopes to get his speech to come back. He regressed terribly over the winter while at public school. I just don't think that any public school has enough funding to help these kids out. They can't afford to get the teachers proper training to really "get" these kids and help them. It's so sad to me...
We started Enhansa finally and wow, it works! Gabe's speech has returned plus some already in just over a month of being on it. We are still increasing the dosage, we went for the low and slow method. I am so grateful that his speech is back and I can only hope it will keep coming. We also started him on CoQ10, Glutathione cream, and 5HTP. We haven't noticed too much with any of these. Maybe because the Enhansa is hard to beat with improvements.  I must say that the first 2 weeks on Enhansa were pretty terrible as far as the die-off symptoms go. He was so cranky and irritable, but I loved it since I knew that he was on his way up, up, up!  :)  Activated charcoals work for that if needed.

  I'm sure there are tons more things going on in our lives that I'm forgetting to mention right now, but I'll close this post with a few pictures that a dear friend, Abby McKinney Photography captured for us last month. If you want family portraits done that really tell a story about your family, then you should check her out. She is the sweetest person and also has a blog site about her family's recovery from autism.  Here is her site: AbbyMcKinneyPhotography.com or   http://mckinneyclan3.blogspot.com/ . Check her out sometime.

Karma is a B****.....

So, I was telling (bragging a bit actually) our DAN! dr about how Gabe has been SO amazingly healthy this winter. He got sick for 2 days back in October, but hadn't been sick since then at all. Before starting Bio-med treatments my whole family could attest that Gabe was the sickest little boy you could ever know. He ALWAYS had a cough or runny nose every time they saw him. Now that he has been so healthy I realize how horribly ill he really was and that it was not normal to be that way!

So, of course, you know that since I bragged on him he HAD to get sick....little did I know it would only be 6 hours after bragging to Dr. Justus about it. Yep, we came home and a few hours later Gabe was snoozing on the couch with a 103.7 degree fever. Poor baby was sick for about 3 days with some sort of stomach bug he undoubtedly caught from school. To make matters worse, we were out of town for my cousin's wedding in ST. Louis. It's never fun to have a sick baby, but it's even worse to not be at home! Luckily, he started feeling better by the wedding Saturday afternoon and is back to his happy, smiling self now. Hopefully he won't be sick for a while again now! Or until the next out of town trip we plan........   ;)

Gabe seems to be sooooooo much happier to be back on his GFCFSF diet again. We are still keeping him on low sugar- low carbs and watching the intake to make sure he doesn't get over-loaded. We are thinking about trying a product called Virustop by Enzymedica. Anyone ever tried or heard of it??  I have read some pretty awesome recovery stories that are related to using it. Who knows at this point. There are a lot of different directions to go in, and we aren't sure where we are heading yet!

My First Blog Award!!

Thanks to Erin at Yes, Our Hands Are Full, I received my very first beautiful blog award.  :)  How sweet! Thanks Erin! Check out her blog here:http://schmit-ourhandsarefull.blogspot.com/

The rules for accepting this award are that you first thank the person who awarded you, then pick new blogs that you feel deserve this award and notify them that they have won. So fun! Play along with me!  :)


1. McKinney Clan
2. Autism's Bitch
3. 1-2-3 Autism Free
4. Lauren Furrer
5. Adventures in Autism
6. The World is like a book
7. Injecting Sense
8. Abby's Photos
9. Green and Crunchy
10. Don't bite the dog: Life with an autistic toddler
11. The Wellness Philosophy Nutrition Blog
12. Love Veggies and Yoga




~7 Things to know about me~


1. I LOVE my son more than anything in this entire world.
2. I am about 2 months away from having my cosmetology license
3. I love sports and being active
4. I love warm weather and beaches; do not love winter/cold weather
5. Autism is a battle that has made Mike and I's relationship grow closer
6. I am a night owl in a morning person's world
7. I consider myself a pretty friendly and out-going person. I love people!




:)  :)  :)

Cashew Butter Reese Cups :)

Thursday night I decided to try a recipe that a friend recommended to us for Almond butter Reese Cups. I wanted something to send in for Gabe's Valentine's Day party at school Friday. Reese Cups are Gabe's all time fav. candy. He LOVES peanut butter and was very sad when he couldn't have it anymore due to his sensitivity.

Instead of almond butter, I decided to try salted, cashew butter with the enojy life allergy-free chocolate bars and semi-sweet chocolate chips. I melted the chocolate over the stove for a few minutes in a saucepan and then poured the first layer in muffin cups. Stick them in the freezer for about 10 minutes until hard and then add a tsp of your favorite nut butter and then cover the nut butter with more chocolate. Freeze again until they are hardened and wrap individually with saran wrap! I stored them in the fridge, not sure if they would go bad otherwise. I assume they would. Gabe LOVVVVVVVED them. He was SO thrilled to be getting candy again and had chocolate everywhere after. Little does he know that it's healthy candy!  :) I love moments like that!

Here is a picture of them! They turned out great and were so simple to make. I was so excited!

I give up!

Yes, I said it. I give up on the SC diet! Gabe is miserable and not showing any positive signs from it, so I give up. We are going to stay GFCF and of course, organic and use many of the SCD recipes for health reasons. I am actually thinking of trying to make Gabe the yoghurt also. Might as well, right? lol
 I honestly think that there is no reason to live if you are not happy with life, and Gabe not being happy is not ok for me. His happiness is the MOST important thing in this world to me. I love him more than anything and will try just about anything to recover him from this terrible thing called autism, but I will NOT sit back and let him be un-happy. It would be one thing if he was doing amazing new things and could poop everyday without the use of a laxative, but sadly that just is not the case.

I'm sure that SCD works for many, many people and I do think it has many great qualities. It just doesn't work for Gabe. We gave it almost a full 3 month trial period. The weirdest thing is, we let Gabe get his favorite pizza from a local place called Monical's (they make a GF crust and we don't get cheese) and we saw NO reactions to coming off SCD. If anything, he pooped 4 times in the last 2 days and they were really "normal" consistency again (his poops have been TERRIBLE, smelly and gritty from all the nuts and nut based flours on SCD). I can't explain why except that maybe his body just really needed the carbs from the rice based pizza crust again. It is probably really hard for a 5yr old to have enough energy only eating nuts and meats like he was. We are really hopeful that by doing a combination of really healthy meals from both GFCF and SCD we can still heal Gabe's gut and keep him the happy, healthy little boy that we know and love.  Life is all about balance.  :)

Running low on motivation for SCD....

 We are almost to our wit's end with the SC Diet. Gabe is not doing better, if anything, he may be worse off than before. His constipation is back full-force and I know he is just miserable. We have had to give him laxatives almost every day or every other day. His teacher says he is still the wonderfully sweet and loving little boy at school, but his focus and attention span have gone away completely. That was really sad for us to hear because she raved about how great he was doing in those areas at the beginning of the school year when he was GFCF, low sugar and low carb.  How can you do well on GFCF low sugar/low carb, but not do well on the SCD? You would think that he would excel on this diet.... autism sucks!!!

We have looked in to a few possibilities of why he would be struggling and have added all of his supplements back in to his diet that we had removed that were not SCD legal. He is doing a little better from those coming back, but I can't really attribute that to SCD. If anyone has any suggestions or experiences please feel free to share. I am open to all ideas at this point. lol
We are going to give the diet until the end of this month and then we may go back to GFCF again if there is no changes by then. Gabe is getting really tired of eating the same foods I think and It is far too time consuming and expensive of a diet to not see any improvements in two full months (will be 3 months after Feb.).
 

More pictures to share!

Gabe and Mommy at the Indianapolis Zoo...last warm day of Fall.  :)

 

 Gabe at Turkey Run State Park...family Canoe Trip!

 

 My pumpkin at the pumpkin patch.  :)

 

 Gabey with Santa Claus when we went to pick out our Tree.

 Gabe and Mike canoeing  :)

                                          Gabe and I at the State Fair...this ride was HORRIBLE!

                                                                    Monkey Gabe!

                                                          Love him so much!

                                                      Floatin' down the Creek.  :)