Kim Stagliano on TodayMoms Blog: Will I Have a Second Child With Autism?
Thank you to everyone who has commented and/or emailed me from the MSNBC TodayMoms blog after this post below. The emails especially charmed me - each one touching and personal. As we read of the horrors that the isolation, frustration and despair of autism can create, it's important to remember that we're not really alone, friends and a new family are just a click away. Get involved with each of our sponsors, sign on to their newsletters, you won't regret it. I'd appreciate if you'd hit "like" and FaceBook on the MSNBC blog please. Here's the intro to the post: KS
A new study in Pediatrics says the recurrence risk of autism in younger siblings is higher than thought. Hardly comforting to autism families who want a second or third child and not surprising to me, Mom of three (!) daughters with autism.
In 1999, my daughters Mia and Gianna were 3 and 4 years old. Both girls were in school for speech and other developmental issues, which made my life as a Mom more stressful and full of questions than most others.
But I adored babies, and had always planned to have three, four, maybe five children. Pregnancy and infancy were a blessing to me. (Mmm, maybe not the sleep deprivation part of those first months.) However, with two girls who were obviously developmentally delayed, we also wanted answers. Would autism strike all of our children if we chose to have more?
We had a pediatrician in Philadelphia when the girls were very young who told me, “I’ve never heard of a family with more than one child with autism.” Then Gianna began to exhibit the signs. Uh oh...
Read and comment on Kim Stagliano on TodayMoms Blog HERE.
Your best article, Kim. loved reading it, appreciate every word. Our kids are loved and deserve to be born and live as they are meant to. They are all here to teach us so much. I have days where i am overwhelmed, no different from other Mom's on this journey. And yet, i wouldn't change anything, my son is one of my best teachers (I have a lot to learn!), as is his younger brother. God Bless you and your family, Kim.
Posted by: Joan | August 17, 2011 at 11:15 PM
I'm a mom of four children---my two sons do NOT have autism, and my two daughters DO.
Posted by: Britt | August 17, 2011 at 07:19 PM
Kim, I tried to post to that page and it sat there and waited and waited and waited, so I think I will post here what I said, and hopefully I can say it like it was there. I have two with autism, a boy and girl. They were both born in the early/mid eighties. Imagine that time period, which had no internet or information as background. When my son had his DPT injury, it was expressed in the news at the time that they were starting to see injuries from DPT. I asked the pediatrician about it, but he fluffed it off as rare, and it won't happen. Well, it did. I continued to have more babies, two more girls, without any injury or signs of autism, so I thought it was just a fluke. By the time someone took me seriously that my son was not developing correctly, I was preggers with my fourth child, a girl. I definately took p out of DPT so as to remove in my mind "the culprit" of my sons reaction. Little did I know, MMR was also a "culprit" in autism. By 1987, they were starting to push meningitis vaccines, and a host of others which I refused in my daughter. She began to have signs of autism after her MMR vaccine, albeit a more insidious course. After years of research, I have concluded along with other researchers that the path of autism in a family, or what they call "multiplex" families, was due to a number of factors. One, the mother has an abnormal immune response to pathogens and toxins. Two, she used tylenol during vaccine fevers or if she was ill during pregnancy (interesting, I had EBV with my son and STREP throat with my daughter). This sort of "sets up" autism. Then, if you have a familial pathogen such as XMRV and Lyme, and SV40 (yes, the gift that keeps on giving), you have a pathogen for which you never overcame and is inherited to your children. Then, if you have DAUGHTERS with autism, according to Dr Bill Walsh, their biochemistry is even more screwed up than boys with autism, because they have very abnormal androgen/testosterone/estrogen imbalances, which essentially "feeds" XMRV. It also makes you a sitting duck with mercury. On top of that, if you live in the "same ole moldy house" or by a "cement plant emitting mercury"...which we did for all four of our children, then you have environmental factors which are not easily explained by epidemiological research, with many variations on the theme of how toxins can damage (try fluoride cities, living near freeways, pesticides near agriculture, crematoria, etc etc). Then, you have mothers who have amalgam fillings (which I did have), and was even more mercury poisoned than my children with autism. Then you have a mom with autoimmune issues (I have vitiligo, I have hashimotos)...you have the same mom having issues with forming fetal proteins against neural tissue. (Dad's are not out of this picture either, because all of these things in his sperm as well can affect development)...so, this thing about genetic is just, stupid. We did take part in AGRE multiplex family studies, and found we had an abnormal complement protein C4B. My son has zero complement, which makes his ability to mount an immune response to pathogens almost nill. Then I found out about six years ago, we all had lyme disease, which is fully capable of causing multiplex autism in a family. I think, most of our genes are affected by oxidative stress and lack of methylation and a familial pathogen affecting methylation and detox (glutathione block) and if they are only to study those aspects of genetics, I would be fine with that, because that's what is explaining autism...the inability to handle oxidative stress. If we go for synapse genes, then let's remember that synapses are affected by lipid rafts and other G proteins, which are also affected by mercury toxicity and oxidative stress. There is simply no other reason to explain this epidemic, than by a toxic inflammatory viral bacterial equation. And that's not just coming from "mother nature",,, it's coming from MANS NATURE to destroy us and our children by profit.
Posted by: kathy blanco | August 17, 2011 at 12:02 PM
One of the most terrible consequences of the last few decades in autism research is that by pushing the genetic causation, many parents were discouraged to have additional children.
As the recent Stanford Medical School research on twins indicates autism is less than 50% genetic, the rest is the environment.
My advice to anyone who is concerned is to take a hard look at your environment and see what you can change. I think JB Handley had a great post on this earlier.
You can reduce your child's risk by eliminating toxins from your environment and diet, opting out of vaccines or spacing them out.
Genes are not destiny, you need both genes and the environment. We cannot control the genes but we can control our environment.
Posted by: Cassandra | August 17, 2011 at 12:01 PM
The Kawasakis website and the expert on autism doctor Burns in California is now pointing to genetics as the cause.
For the first time more than one child in the family are claiming Kawasakis is happening to more than one child in the family.
I know that both of my kids had Kawasakis. One was classical Kawasakis and the other was atypical and was not even dignosed.
I commented on the website that if it was genetic then the genes must have been in the same vial as the vaccine they reacted too.
Claims that these environmental diseases are genetic is getting very old. I am sick of it.
I have listened to how they explain the increases in all these genetic diseases, and all their explainations have really big holes in logic.
Posted by: Benedetta | August 17, 2011 at 09:49 AM