Raymond continued progressing at a normal to slightly advance pace the rest of his first year. He hit all his milestones, crawling at 10 months, walking at 11 months and running since. However, his language came slowly. He did alright with words, but never seemed capable of forming sentences or asking for things. An independent child, he quickly figured out how to open the refrigerator and climb up on things to meet his needs. We began childproofing and locking down the house.
He still managed to communicate though. He began pointing at what he wanted, and shortly thereafter he would pull you to where he wanted you to be. Also, he mimicked words at an amazing rate.
At 12 months, we took him in for his 12 month shots. I don’t have his vaccine record handy right now, but I know he received 4 shots with 9 vaccines, and the DTaP was one of them. We gave him tylenol prior to vaccinating, as we had been instructed by our pediatrician. I got to hold my son down while the nurses injected him. I knew when we did it something was wrong, but the vaccines were recommended by the pediatrician. My wife and I thought we had done our research, but apparently we didn’t look in the right places. At any rate, he had a rough couple days with a low grade fever. We gave him more tylenol as we thought he was in pain from the shot. He recovered okay, or so we thought.
He seemed okay until about 14 months, when his tantrums got worse and his eating suffered. He used to eat whatever we put in front of him, but after the shots his diet became very limited. Milk, mac and cheese, bread and pasta were his staples. We couldn’t get anything else in him.
Then we went in for his 15 month vaccines and hell started breaking loose. His 15 month vaccines were MMR and DTaP. Right off the bat he stopped sleeping through the night. He first slept through the night when he was 2 and a half months old. My wife and I joked that it was our Christmas gift in 2003, and it was the best one we had gotten to date. However, after the vaccines, he would wake up in the middle of the night and then come wake us up. We tried everything to get him back to bed, but nothing worked. My wife and I both went to work with 2-3 hours of sleep many times during that stretch. His tantrums continued to get worse and he was impossible to transition.
The hardest part to understand was that he stopped responding to us. Raymond has always been a very loving child. However, after the shots he stopped tuning in to us the way he had before. He didn’t make eye contact, and preferred instead to play by himself. I know the CDC has done study after study “proving” that vaccines do not cause autism, but I’m not buying it. I witnessed the change in my son. Whether or not the vaccines or something in them caused his issues, I know they at the very least triggered something that wasn’t there before. We will not risk our next childs neurological development by vaccinating.
I would love to go on, but I’m a little unfocused right now. Sometimes its hard to think back on this stuff and not get angry and frustrated. Also, my wonderful son wants some attention, so I’ll blog more later.
