He stood behind Haiden and cracked his neck three times violently

It all started four years ago

In September 2015, I became pregnant with my second child after 8 months. This pregnancy was completely different from the first one. I suffered from nausea, back pain, a pinched nerve in my groin, carpal tunnel syndrome, and leg cramps. Any pregnancy ailment you can think of, I had it. With my first son, I had to have an emergency cesarean section due to the labor not progressing. I also had preeclampsia at that time. That pregnancy was hellish, and I had decided to opt for a planned cesarean for the second delivery. I have not regretted this decision for a moment!

On May 9th, my little guy was born. What a wonderful experience. After day 2, we were allowed to go home because I felt so good. When we arrived home, my girlfriend was waiting because she was a maternity nurse and wanted to help us during the postpartum period. That week we noticed that Haiden was having trouble settling in. He was restless all day long. I couldn't rest in the afternoon. My girlfriend had to take him downstairs repeatedly, so I could get some rest. The only thing he wanted was to be in the baby carrier with me; that's when he was the calmest. In the evenings, he just cried and we had no peace. The same was true for the night. He would sleep a few hours on my stomach, but I couldn't get any rest. Because he was very restless and cried a lot, we also had a hard time with feeding. He didn't want to drink properly, and I was worried about that. I was also worried about all the crying he did. In those few weeks, I had been to the doctor and the child health clinic several times. They said he was just a feisty little guy with a strong will of his own. The crying got worse and he was constantly sick. He had high fever, coughed a lot, had spots on his face, slept in strange positions, and had poor bowel movements. "A low immune system," they said at the child health clinic. The doctor said the same. I thought: "It must be so. This will pass. It's just a phase!" As parents, you still have some trust that it will pass. We struggled all winter with him at the doctor's, the out-of-hours medical service, and the child health clinic. He became very wheezy and for that, he was given inhalers.

When he was almost one year old, I was fed up

I was exhausted, tired, and completely drained. I decided (on the advice of my mother-in-law) to try acupuncture and to have him tested for allergies. It turned out he was allergic to cow's milk! It was quite a shock to me, because apparently, he had this since birth. I felt guilty. I was also angry at the doctor and the health clinic, but on the other hand, I was also relieved that we knew what was wrong with him. The months flew by and we noticed that his crying behavior hadn't changed. However, his bowel movements had improved and he no longer had pimples since he started on goat milk products. That following winter, when he was nearly 2 years old, we went to the pediatrician. He said that Haiden had a low immune system and prescribed a long-term course of antibiotics. This helped a bit, but the crying at night continued. He would cry from about 11:00 PM often until 05:00 AM. We spent nights walking with him, rocking him, bringing him into our bed, repositioning his crib, nothing worked! He screamed through the nights, banging his head against the bars of his crib. He really screamed! My husband and I were spent, truly spent! My husband even sometimes slept on the couch, but even then he couldn't find peace. This went on for months until he was 2.5 years old.

Last September, we started working with an energy healer. Now, many people might think: “What is this airy-fairy nonsense?”, but when you've been struggling with your child for three years as a parent, you'll do anything to make them 'better'. The energy healer told us that Haiden was suffering from a few things: the birth, a vaccination, and he missed certain gut bacteria during the cesarean section. The latter was the main cause of his constant illness. She gave us five homeopathic remedies that he took for 12 weeks. She told us that Haiden's symptoms could worsen in the first 2 to 3 weeks. And this was true! What a terrible few weeks! He just cried night after night. He was uncontrollable. After those three weeks, things got a little better. But still, I felt that he was suffering from something else. Then I got a tip from a friend: she knew a manual therapist who specialized in babies and children with KISS syndrome. I thought: “Why not?” I first Googled and was shocked by all the symptoms. I read a testimonial from a mother and I could see our situation with Haiden in it. I immediately called the therapist and luckily we could go the very next day. This had to be it! Could we finally have found the solution to the past three years?

The next day, the manual therapist asked me all sorts of questions about Haiden

I recounted the entire situation of the past three years. He observed Haiden and simply nodded. Then he said to me: 'I want Haiden to lie down on the massage table.' He watched him and cracked a few things in his back and hips. Then he stood behind his head and took Haiden's head and said: 'He's not going to like this.' Before I knew it, he cracked Haiden's neck. He did this three times. I found it quite intense. The therapist explained that he had over 25 years of experience with children and babies with KISS syndrome, but that Haiden had one of the more severe forms of KISS. Haiden definitely had to come back for another treatment. I was quite in shock. So this was it all along? This explains everything he's been through over the past three years? The poor sleep? Because he had pain in his cervical vertebrae? Couldn't this have been discovered much earlier and he could have just been treated? This hurt me a lot, my mother's heart ached. I cried about it. Why hadn't I been told this before? Doctors don't do anything with this, but child health clinics do. The therapist said that Haiden would start sleeping more peacefully over the coming week and that we would really see a change. And that was true! That very night! Haiden slept peacefully. He lay still all night and didn't toss and turn. He didn't cry. In fact: he didn't wake up once! And it stayed that way. He improved so much! Now he has also had his tonsils treated and we really have a completely different child because of these treatments. Unfortunately, KISS syndrome (also called HCFS) can come back, so we keep a close eye on it. It's bizarre when we think back to how difficult he was and how calm he is now. He's happier and easier to deal with. Over the past few months, I've started talking more about it with people around me. I didn't do this before because I always thought: 'Some parents go through worse,' but I find it comforting. I've become aware that sometimes you need to look beyond just the doctor, the child health clinic, or the hospital.

CAROL