So we had our early intervention evaluation last Thursday. As many of you know by now, my son was diagnosed with down syndrome in the delivery room. Since then, I have been on a roller coaster of emotions. After the first few weeks of waiting and hoping for all this to go away (the diagnosis of T21, Hirschsprung and the NICU stay) I finally came on board and started thinking now what? What can I do to make sure my baby boy has all the resources he needs to succeed in life, something we would have done irrespective of the diagnosis. I started to research (basically google the sh*t out of things) when I would be in the NICU by his side but not able to hold him because of all the machines he was hooked on to. My google searches changed from, "What looks like down syndrome but isn't?" to "How to help baby with down syndrome achieve milestones sooner?". I came across early intervention (being a PT I had no idea about this) and TNI (Targeted Nutritional Intervention).
Early Intervention is a federal program for infants and toddlers under three years of age who may not be making progress like other children because of a developmental delay or disability. My son automatically qualifies for this because of his diagnosis but we still had to jump through hoops to get him enrolled. I appreciate how the government has come up with this to help babies like mine but what I don't appreciate is the sheer amount of time it takes. Laksh was in the NICU for the first two months so that got his early intervention delayed in the first place. The day he got discharged we set up a meeting with our coordinator to get all the paper work signed up and start the process. 3 weeks after we did all that our evaluation happened.Now we have to wait again for the report to come in the mail and then they will set up a meeting to decide how often and what all therapies he would need. Once that is done, we would have to wait again to find a therapist who would be ready to come in to see him. So, another month of waiting before he would actually start any therapy. I feel like we are wasting crucial time and need to start something soon. This lead me to NUTRIVENE.
TNI (Targeted Nutritional Intervention), is a protocol of mega-dosages of vitamins and natural products that the marketing promises helps overcome the effects of Down syndrome by using the logic of balancing out the over-expression of the 21st Chromosome. Dixie Lawrence, a biochemist and team member for Trisomy 21 Research, developed TNI 24 years ago using a method to down regulate (kind of like turning off) over expressed genes. I have read lots of stories about how children who are on this regime show signs of improvement sometimes as early as a couple days after starting it. I am almost sold on this and have placed an order for the daily supplements (back order for now due to the increase demand). I understand that is the best place to start and then gradually add other supplements.
This is part of what Dixie Lawrence has shared on a closed FB group, "By carefully selecting nutrients that naturally inhibit certain genes and giving them in the exact order, exact synergy and exact amount, excess genes can be stopped from producing excess proteins. Everything we have done is supported by research. The results are more than impressive. In many cases, they are miraculous. For instance, babies who begin the protocol early and who's parents are diligent in giving it correctly, walk right on time - not at 3 to 5 years. These kids are smart and capable, they integrate into the school systems without so much as the blink of an eye. They grow up verbal - often multilingual, get honest to goodness real diplomas, go to college, drive cars, get married, move away and make you wonder where those baby years have gone.
Your child deserves this chance in life. So do mine. I have a daughter and a granddaughter both with DS. Both are beautiful, intelligent girls. My daughter graduated in the top 5% of her regular high school (not special ed) and went on to work as a teacher's aid for deaf students (she herself, is deaf) and then to become a Certified Life Guard. My granddaughter is only 12 and she is an excellent student, fully integrated into all regular classrooms. Her communication skills are normal. Her grades are terrific. And these two represent only a few success stories of kids who receive the appropriate treatment."
Just a helpful link:
http://trisomy21research.org/
There are some other therapies that I have read about but no idea how it works.This is a link on the NDSS website that talks about these alternative therapies, http://www.ndss.org/Resources/Therapies-Development/Alternative-Therapies/.
This is also a great website to look at http://www.dsdiagnosisnetwork.org/ created by Jen Jacob. I found this very useful.
Laksh looking overwhelmed by all the information in this blog. Sorry about that dear readers. Tried to be as concise as possible. Let me know if there is something you want me to talk about in particular. Will definitely update about how Laksh reacts to Nutrivene-D once we receive it .
Early Intervention is a federal program for infants and toddlers under three years of age who may not be making progress like other children because of a developmental delay or disability. My son automatically qualifies for this because of his diagnosis but we still had to jump through hoops to get him enrolled. I appreciate how the government has come up with this to help babies like mine but what I don't appreciate is the sheer amount of time it takes. Laksh was in the NICU for the first two months so that got his early intervention delayed in the first place. The day he got discharged we set up a meeting with our coordinator to get all the paper work signed up and start the process. 3 weeks after we did all that our evaluation happened.Now we have to wait again for the report to come in the mail and then they will set up a meeting to decide how often and what all therapies he would need. Once that is done, we would have to wait again to find a therapist who would be ready to come in to see him. So, another month of waiting before he would actually start any therapy. I feel like we are wasting crucial time and need to start something soon. This lead me to NUTRIVENE.
TNI (Targeted Nutritional Intervention), is a protocol of mega-dosages of vitamins and natural products that the marketing promises helps overcome the effects of Down syndrome by using the logic of balancing out the over-expression of the 21st Chromosome. Dixie Lawrence, a biochemist and team member for Trisomy 21 Research, developed TNI 24 years ago using a method to down regulate (kind of like turning off) over expressed genes. I have read lots of stories about how children who are on this regime show signs of improvement sometimes as early as a couple days after starting it. I am almost sold on this and have placed an order for the daily supplements (back order for now due to the increase demand). I understand that is the best place to start and then gradually add other supplements.
This is part of what Dixie Lawrence has shared on a closed FB group, "By carefully selecting nutrients that naturally inhibit certain genes and giving them in the exact order, exact synergy and exact amount, excess genes can be stopped from producing excess proteins. Everything we have done is supported by research. The results are more than impressive. In many cases, they are miraculous. For instance, babies who begin the protocol early and who's parents are diligent in giving it correctly, walk right on time - not at 3 to 5 years. These kids are smart and capable, they integrate into the school systems without so much as the blink of an eye. They grow up verbal - often multilingual, get honest to goodness real diplomas, go to college, drive cars, get married, move away and make you wonder where those baby years have gone.
Your child deserves this chance in life. So do mine. I have a daughter and a granddaughter both with DS. Both are beautiful, intelligent girls. My daughter graduated in the top 5% of her regular high school (not special ed) and went on to work as a teacher's aid for deaf students (she herself, is deaf) and then to become a Certified Life Guard. My granddaughter is only 12 and she is an excellent student, fully integrated into all regular classrooms. Her communication skills are normal. Her grades are terrific. And these two represent only a few success stories of kids who receive the appropriate treatment."
Just a helpful link:
http://trisomy21research.org/
There are some other therapies that I have read about but no idea how it works.This is a link on the NDSS website that talks about these alternative therapies, http://www.ndss.org/Resources/Therapies-Development/Alternative-Therapies/.
This is also a great website to look at http://www.dsdiagnosisnetwork.org/ created by Jen Jacob. I found this very useful.
Laksh looking overwhelmed by all the information in this blog. Sorry about that dear readers. Tried to be as concise as possible. Let me know if there is something you want me to talk about in particular. Will definitely update about how Laksh reacts to Nutrivene-D once we receive it . 
Great post! Welcome to the ds family. Your baby is beautiful. I too chose TNI to help my daughter and 3 years into our journey, I can say it definitely works!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much. I think he is beautiful too. I am glad to hear that it has been working well for your daughter and that is all I am hoping for my baby as well. Are you on the full protocol?
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