Life in the world of ~~~ Breastfeeding, Babywearing, Co-Sleeping, Cloth Diapering, Natural Birthing, Attachment Parenting, Questioning Vaccination, Autism, The Feingold Diet, Organic Eating, and More!
BEFORE OUR THIRD BABY
There is a time span of almost seven years between the births of our second and third babies. Why, you ask? Well, there were two factors. One is that we have moved a lot for my husband’s jobs. In our first son’s life, we have lived in four states and five houses. The second factor is that we were waiting for our first son to recover from autism. The second factor is the biggest one for us. While our first son has not fully recovered, he is much improved and on his way to recovery. His achievements and gains have all resulted from Defeat Autism Now! (DAN!) Biomedical Treatment.
By the time of our second baby’s birth, I had finally educated myself somewhat regarding vaccinations. I decided that he would not receive the Hepatitis B vaccination, at all. We had a new pediatrician, and she agreed that the Hepatitis B vaccination was completely not necessary. Additionally, our pediatrician agreed that our new baby would receive no more than one vaccination per month. While she was very pro-vaccination, she was also very understanding of mommy concerns and was quite respectful of my choices. I am so thankful for her!
In the months following the birth of our second baby, I continued to explore the positives and negatives of vaccination. Through this additional learning and through religious counsel, I realized that vaccination violated my religious beliefs. This is the reason that, for our children, we hold religious exemptions to vaccination. As I believe that God created my children, I must also believe that God created them with healthy immune systems that are designed to keep them healthy. I believe that vaccination damages the immune systems that God has given to my children. I have sadly seen this happen with our first child. Therefore, we no longer allow our children to have their God-created bodies damaged by vaccines.
Our second baby continuously thrived! He never contracted a childhood disease, with the exception of chicken pox. (And is that really a disease? I think not!) He had no “behaviors”. He was very happy and very social (which is also who he is today!). He did have a slight language delay, and testing did show a bit of mercury toxicity (most likely from his vaccinations). Amazingly, a few weeks of doctor-ordered chelation at age three years ended his language delay, bringing forth the chattering little boy we have today!
It took me quite a while to come up with the “perfect” name for my blog. I would come up with “a great idea” but soon after would determine it was not so great after all – and so on. Finally, in a moment of “brilliance”, I found the name – THE PURE BABY.
The Pure Baby, you see, is one of the names that I have for our baby. Usually, I will call him “The Pure Baby” in moments that we see him doing something that we deem extraordinary and wonderful :) At those times, I realize that he is the amazing little baby that he is, because we have kept him pure.
OUR FIRST BABY (pictured at left)
After we brought our first baby home from the hospital, I felt so overwhelmed with this great responsibility that had been given to us. I was at home alone with my new baby all day long, while my husband worked. It was a bit scary. I would think to myself that this was our “practice baby”. I kept thinking that this baby would be a learning experience, and I hoped that we would not make many mistakes.
Sadly, we made a huge mistake with our first baby. I feel so responsible for this, and I hold an incredible amount of regret and guilt. This mistake changed our family and our lives forever. This mistake has brought great pain to us, and this mistake has cost us a good amount of money. The behaviors and aggression resulting from this mistake have even alienated us from friends and family.
This horrible mistake was vaccination. Our first baby received his first mercury-laden vaccination on his first day of life. Hepatitis B. Apparently, newborn babies are carrying the risk factors for that. HA. A bunch of nonsense. I had not educated myself about vaccinations. I just assumed that if a doctor said it was good, it must be. After all, Americans are supposed to worship the almighty doctors, right? At the same time, I had been exposed to a bit of anti-vaccination information during my first baby’s pregnancy. I had checked out from the library, a bunch of Mothering Magazineissues. In at least one, I discovered an article stating that vaccinations do more harm than good. Additionally, my chiropractor put out a newsletter in which she wrote of vaccine dangers, including real live stories of vaccine-injured people. So you see, even though I was exposed to some anti-vaccination information, I did not listen. I did not learn. I let our baby be vaccinated. I let him be vaccinated ever so frequently during his first couple of years. I allowed our baby to be mercury poisoned and vaccine-injured. I let our baby develop autism.
Yes, I said develop autism. Our baby was PERFECT when he was born. He was 9 pounds, 10 ounces of beautiful baby boy. He was alert and a very enthusiastic breast feeder from the moment of his birth. Our baby was not born with autism. Our baby was born PERFECT. Our baby’s perfection was destroyed by the intense series of mercury-containing vaccinations that he received, which so incredibly began before he was even a day old.
When our first baby was five months old, I began attending La Leche League meetings. At La Leche League, there were a good number of non-vaccinating moms. I’d never met moms like that before, and at first, I thought they were a little weird (to not vaccinate their babies). But, in time, I began to listen. I also subscribed to Mothering Magazine. Between what I learned from my La Leche League friends and Mothering Magazine, I started to question vaccination – a little. I decided that I wanted to separate our baby’s MMR vaccine into the three separate ingredients – Measles, Mumps, and Rubella. I talked to our pediatrician about this. He said it was not necessary and that there was no science behind it, but he agreed to administer the vaccines separately if we spaced them no more than a month apart.
When our first baby was 3 ½ years old, we moved to a new state for my husband’s new job. There, we found a wonderful developmental pediatrician who was associated with a major children’s hospital. She evaluated our son and made two life-changing recommendations. First, she said that our son would likely benefit tremendously from The Feingold Diet . I told her that I had previously tried to do a Feingold-like diet with our son, taking out all of the artificial ingredients and buying all of his food at Whole Foods Market. Our doctor said this was not enough. She said that The Feingold Diet cannot be done properly without first buying the materials from The Feingold Association. She said that we needed to buy those materials right away. Then, she said that I should take The Feingold Foodlist book with me to all of the local grocery stores and code the book according to what I could buy at each store. Our doctor’s second suggestion was to take our son to a particular DAN! (Defeat Autism Now!) doctor that she believed would be very helpful to us.
We followed her advice. With The Feingold Diet, our son’s behavior improved dramatically. He lost much of his aggression! After a six-month wait for our appointment with the DAN! doctor, we were able to start Biomedical Treatment and begin seeing additional gains in our son! Wow, it was just all so amazing! We were and are so very thankful for our wonderful developmental pediatrician who put our son on the road to recovery! She was the major turning point in our son’s life and ours.
As I mentioned already, our son’s autism has alienated us from friends and family. It seems that they have avoided us because they prefer to not experience life with our first child. It is not easy. I know. His first birthday party was a total disaster. A good number of his little friends declined our invitation. Our son dominated the friends that did attend, taking toys away and pushing them down. By his second birthday, our playgroup “friends” told us that we were no longer welcome. At age three, he was discharged from his first nursery school. When we moved to a new state at age three and a half, he qualified for 45 hours per week of state-provided therapy. Our evaluator said that he was the first child that she had found who qualified for such a great number of therapy hours. At age four, our son was discharged from two more nursery schools, again due to anti-social behaviors.
We have few visitors to our home. Family tends to stay away, even after the birth of The Pure Baby. I think that our relatives find our first son to be too exhausting and just too much overall. Our son has made tremendous gains through both The Feingold Diet and DAN! (Defeat Autism Now!) Biomedical Treatment. His aggression and “behaviors” have decreased into a shadow of what they once were. Even so, he is not as delightful as a “neuro-typical” (normal) child. He tends to be “clingy” and demands attention. He wants his relatives to play with him and to hold hands with him. He has an intense need to be loved.
I've been spending some time looking at the website of Homefirst in Chicago. Wow! I am amazed! I had heard of Dr. Mayer Eisenstein but was not aware of the extent of his greatness. I've never even been to Chicago, but I want to move there so that our family can be part of Dr. Eisenstein's incredible medical practice!
What is so special about Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, you may ask? Well, he appears to be an extreme rarity in the world of doctors. According to Dr. Eisenstein, all vaccines cause neurological damage, and he therefore does not administer vaccines in his Homefirst practice. And guess what? None of his (non-vaccinated) patients have autism! Is anyone noticing this clear connection between no vaccinations and no autism? It sounds just like the Amish, as the Amish also carry these two unusual and distinguishing traits. Some skeptics may write off the Amish "phenomenon" as genetic, but can they write off the Homefirst patient base - which clearly has no genetic connection? I think not!
Additionally, Dr. Eisenstein and his team of doctors at Homefirst are homebirth doctors! You read that right. These doctors actually come to your house, to provide any needed assistance, while youbirthyourbaby yourway. You get crunchy midwife-like care, along with the extra expertise a doctor may have :)
So now I have to convince my husband that we need to move to Chicago! We likely will be moving somewhere in the next year or two, so I've got to get the focus onto Chicago! I'm planning to have a homebirth when The Pure Baby has a new baby brother or sister, and I think my husband's comfort level would go way up if we had a doctor on hand.
Being part of a non-vaccinating medical practice is extremely appealing and comforting to me. Where we live now, it is impossible to have a pediatrician for a non-vaccinated child. Even though we live in a major city, we have to drive two hours to see my children's family practitioner. Two hours! He is the only one in the area who would take them on as patients. All of the local pediatricians are apparently too scared, having likely been subjected to intimidation by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Even if these pediatricians do believe that vaccines are harmful, they are too scared to say so. And, they are additionally too scared to have non-vaccinated children in their patient base. On the other hand, Dr. Eisenstein fearlessly proclaims that vaccines are harmful, and makes a safe medical home for non-vaccinating families.
We have SNOW!!! We got 3-4 inches on Friday, and it is still with us now. Plus, it is supposed to snow more tomorrow :)
My older boys are extremely thrilled about the snow! They pray for snow all of the time, and they pray for us to move back to where we used to live - so that we can get lots of snow all winter. Where we live now, each winter brings some snow - but not a good, continuous quantity.
Happily, after living in the Northeast, my boys are fully prepared for snow play! We've got the snowsuits, snow boots, mittens, hats, a snowboard, and a good amount of sleds. And to make it even better, we have great hills in both our yard and our neighbors' yard!
The Pure Baby (PB) is also enjoying the snow :) He loves to tromp around the snow in his cute snow boots. And, he has been having great fun riding on the sled with his big brothers (who love him so much)!
When my two older children were babies, I spent plenty of time in the pediatrician's waiting room. During my visits there, I often witnessed the Tylenol phenomenon. A great number of moms would carry Tylenol Infants' Drops in the diaper bag and give the babies a shot of Tylenol just prior to being seen by the pediatrician for a real shot (or 2 or 3 or 4!) of vaccine(s).
Why the shot of Tylenol? Well, I think that is what pediatricians must be saying is "the right thing to do," in order to help the baby avoid pain during the vaccine shots. At the same time, research is showing that the use of Tylenol to decrease the pain of the vaccine shot is actually, in many cases, causing a lifetime of pain for the child (and of course, the child's family). What is happening here? Tylenol is preventing the child's body from detoxifying from the vaccine. You see, Tylenol decreases glutathione. Glutathione is the body's great detoxifier. With a good supply of glutathione, the body is able to eliminate toxicities (such as those associated with vaccines). With a poor supply of glutathione, the body sadly retains the toxicities. And guess what is happening? Children who are unable to detoxify from vaccines are developingAUTISM.
Sure, there are many children who took both a shot of Tylenol and and a shot of vaccine - and did not develop autism. Some children have excellent detoxifying capabilites that are good enough to protect them, even when taking Tylenol. Unfortunately, it is not possible to identify whether a child is a good detoxifier, and parents therefore must gamble with their child when giving a vaccine. Even if it seems that the child has previously been able to detoxify, that can quickly change, due to the immense quantity of vaccinations. Additionally, there are also many children today who do not have autism but are clearly functioning at a lower than optimal level. In addition to skyrocketing autism rates, we also have a great increase in ADD, ADHD, Developmental Language Disorder, ODD, learning disabilities, and more.
Today I am basking in the joy of spending the entire (school) day at home with The Pure Baby (PB)! I am so thrilled to have this day of peaceful happiness with my little man :) This is the first time that we have been home alone together all day, with the exception of the days following PB's birth and a couple times that I was very ill with mastitis. No, I - a mom of three - do not dream of time alone. Rather, I adore having time alone with my PB, treasuring my sweet baby!
This morning, my husband drove the carpool to school! He had a meeting nearby our school, which allowed for this great happening. Driving the carpool to school is a big undertaking, which includes our two older boys plus two other boys on a one hour drive to school. The part of the drive that includes the other two boys is *not peaceful* to the point that we have to play a DVD for that part of the drive.
I am looking to this day as a day of peace that will help to reduce my high stress level. I've been feeling quite stressed lately. Life here at our house can get to be too much sometimes. Despite our many blessings, our life is not easy. My life has never been easy nor has my husband's. We both neglected to draw the "easy life" straws. We both had difficult childhoods, peaking in trauma at about the same time on the calendar. Now in our life together, we have a child who is recovering from autism. Yes, he is recovering, and that is great and wonderful. But, it still is not easy. We have so much more to deal with than those who drew the "easy life" straws. Our son still has behaviors. Our son's biomedical treatment costs us a tremendous amount of money. And, we truly don't know the future of our son's recovery.
So today, PB and I are relaxing together. We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, during which PB ate a pear (his favorite!) plus much more - as PB is a big eater. We've done some laundry, and we organized PB's toys. We found some missing pieces under the couch! PB and I have also been playing with his favorite Primo Legos! We have this set that I've linked to, plus a circus set. We've been stacking the bricks according to color and playing with the people! PB absolutely loves it when I make the Primo Lego people talk to him :) My mom used to make all the Fisher Price Little People talk for me, and I remember how fun that was!
In 1998, Dr. Andrew Wakefield published a daring hypothesis in the Lancet, showing clinical evidence of an association between the MMR vaccine, autism, and bowel disease. That kind of thinking brings great unhappiness and discomfort to those in both the pharmaceutical and medical industries, thus leading to efforts to discredit the work of Dr. Andrew Wakefield.
The Pure Baby (PB) is having a sleeper day! Its actually "just another" sleeper day, as PB has been having lots of sleeper days lately :)
Each morning, we are up early at our house, since I have to drive the carpool. It is a long drive - one hour to school, in chilly weather. There is lots of traffic, plus we have to stop and pick up a couple kids. Because of all of this, I have become a fan of keeping PB in his sleeper! He is warm and cozy, and it is easy! I just unzip his sleeper, change his diaper, and then zip it back up again. Easy - and saves time.
My favorite sleepers are the cotton sleepers from The Children's Place. The Children's Place actually calls them "stretchies". These sleepers are generously cut, are made from thicker fabric than many similar sleepers, and have nice tread on the feet.
Our first and second babies wore blanket sleepers, but we have avoided those for PB. I tossed all of our blanket sleepers, when our first son's testing showed high levels of antimony. Our doctor said that antimony is used as flame retardant in children's sleepwear, and he said that we needed to switch over to cotton, non-flame-retardant sleepwear. Within a few months of making the move to cotton, my first son's antimony level decreased drastically! So scary that so many kids are unknowingly being antimony-poisoned by their pajamas!
The Pure Baby (PB) is sleeping again, ever so beautifully :) I love to look at him. I love to gaze at his beauty and adore every little part of him. His nose is so perfect and so adorable. He has my husband's nose. He is the first of our three children to have my husband's non-pointy and curved-tip nose :) PB also has my husband's mouth. He usually sleeps with his lips open a bit, so that I can see just a hint of his cute white teeth :) PB has beautiful big blue eyes - the same blue eyes as his brothers. Actually, our whole family has blue eyes :) Of course, I cannot see his eyes right now since he is sleeping. Instead, I see his soft eyelids, lined with his long eyelashes. PB has the trademark forehead of my husband's family. All three of our children have this strong and slightly prominent forehead :) PB has perfectly arched eyebrows. When he was tiny, so many people commented on his beauty - especially his eyebrows.
Holding my baby while he sleeps is such an honor. I'm the one he wants to be with during sleep. I feel so loved :) And, I love PB so very much. I treasure PB, and I treasure this time in PB's babyhood.
As I wrote in previous post, The Pure Baby (PB) wears cloth diapers!
PB's diaper stash includes bumGenius! 3.0 One-Size Pocket Diapers, FuzziBunz One-Size Diapers, ThirstiesDiaper Covers - Version 2.0, bumGenius! Diaper Doublers, and Unbleached Indian Prefold Diapers.
When I first started thinking of cloth diapers, the idea of cleaning them was just a bit scary. I thought I would be spending half my life washing diapers! I am happy to say that this was not the case! Life with cloth diapers is *easy*. Washing cloth diapers is only a couple extra loads of laundry each week!
After PB has used a diaper, I place it into his *dry* diaper pail. If it is a pocket diaper (such as bumGenius! 3.0 One-Size or FuzziBunz One-Size), I remove the insert(s) from the diaper prior to placing everything into the diaper pail. If it is an Unbleached Indian Prefold Diaper with a bumGenius! Diaper Doubler and Thirsties Diaper Cover, I just drop all of it into the diaper pail without having to separate. If PB has a BM in his diaper, I first drop most of the BM into a nearby trash can before putting the diaper into the diaper pail. That is all that I have to do on a daily basis!
Every three to four days, I wash PB's diapers. That is also an easy process. I put the washer onto the hot water and full load settings. Additionally, I push the buttons for pre-wash soaking and extra-rinse cycle. Next, I put in the laundry detergent. This is *key*. I use the tiniest amount of All Free and Clear. Using any more than this small amount will lead to detergent build-up, which in turn leads to diapers not being absorbent. I've had that experience and do not recommend it!
After the wash cycles are complete, I place the Unbleached Indian Prefold Diapers, the bumGenius! Diaper Doublers, and the *inserts* for both bumGenius! 3.0 One-Size Pocket Diapers and FuzziBunz One-Size Diapers into the dryer - and dry on high heat. The high heat is an extra step to kill bacteria. Rather than use the dryer, I hang-to-dry the bumGenius! 3.0 One-Size Pocket Diapers, the FuzziBunz One-Size Diapers, and the Thirsties Diaper Covers. This allows the diapers as well as their Velcro to have a longer life.
After all of the diapers and components are dry, I then fold and reassemble the diapers. I place the inserts back into both the bumGenius! 3.0 One-Size Pocket Diapers and the FuzziBunz One-Size Diapers. Into stacks, I fold the Unbleached Indian Prefold Diapers, the bumGenius! Diaper Doublers, and the Thirsties Diaper Covers. Then I place all of this back on the changing table shelf, and everything is ready to go for the next few days' diaper changes!
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