Our son regressed into autism during his second year of life.

He became increasingly allergic, developed diarrhoea and chronic insomnia. By the time he was three and a half, he was suffering from extreme constipation. Given that next to nothing came out of his bowel, it became very difficult to get him to eat. He started to look very malnourished. He had a swollen abdomen, tiny arms and stalks for his legs. He ate next to nothing, slept very little, cried a lot of the time and had eczema all over his body. We were making regular visits to the doctor and tried liquid paraffin, Lactulose, Senna and Movicol but none improved his chronic constipation. We had an appointment at a paediatric gastroenterology clinic at a leading London Hospital in February 2008 and were initially very excited to be offered an X-ray. The resulting picture confirmed constipation and mega-rectum, and he was prescribed yet more laxatives. We told them that the laxatives werent working and that we had started doing nightly enemas to get the bowel moving, We had to use nightly enemas for over a year before a low dose of an antibiotic got his bowel to move on its own. Just six days after starting the treatment, our son sat on the toilet and did a poo as if it was the most natural thing in the world. We were over the moon. There is something seriously wrong in his intestinal tract and it is critical that more clinic investigations are done and more research is conducted - to help our children. Our son has been much healthier and happier and less autistic- since his bowel started to work on its own.