Doing Better

Just what you wanted to see...poopy diaper pictures. But look at that mucus...seriously. Not normal.


Oh yeah, if you saw on facebook, I am doing the TED Diet- Total Elimination. I am only eating turkey, rice, pears, squash, and potatoes for a few weeks, while Ella's gut heals and the mucus should stop in her diapers- when that happens (probably sooner) I can start adding in a new food every 4 days to try to find out WHAT is causing such a problem for her.

How is this diet going, you ask? The first few days were fine. I was excited to be doing something proactive to help her, and we saw results right away with less fussiness and better sleeping. (I had a great wealth of information available to me at infantreflux.org, the forums there with parents who have gone through this same thing = INVALUABLE to me!

Now I am starting to feel sorely tempted to cheat and eat things like brownies and cookies. I already have a list in mind of things I will eat first on the glorious day that I can eat what I want again. But for now I'm sticking to this diet. I would say Ella is about 75% better behavior-wise. Sometimes I want faster results and no fussy behavior at all- and other times I just want to give up, put her on that same formula Annie was on, and just be done with these diet restrictions. We actually tried her on Alimentum for 2 days to see what happened. The first day she was almost a perfect child. The second day she was fussy. So maybe we didn't try for long enough, but the thing that bothered me the most was the SMELL! That stuff stinks. It makes your baby stink and the spit up stinks, my clothes stunk, my room stunk (etc) and my sweet baby didn't smell so sweet anymore. I'm not quite ready to go that route, for the smelliness alone.

Okay, I started writing that last week. Here's the latest: I totally cheated on TED- just to see what would happen. We took Samuel out for a Father's Day lunch last Saturday. We went to this cool chinese "noodle house" where they handmake and "hand pull" their noodles (they don't cut them, they literally stretch them and pull them apart like Cat in a Cradle, or whatever that string game was. It's quite amazing.) So I ate a heaping plate of these homemade noodles with some chicken and very few veggies. I thought I'd pump and dump a few times...which I did twice, but about 24 hours later, poor Ella was MISERABLE. She was screaming in pain and kicking her little legs again, and sometimes just whimpering. It was awful and broke my heart. Bad BAD MAMA! It seemed like it was acid reflux (minus the spitting up) and whatever was in that noodle plate started that acid splashing around like crazy, and now four days later, it's just starting to taper off.

We finally got to see the GI specialist, who told me that Ella has both silent reflux and food allergies. The allergies are causing the mucus, and also the reflux. But lots of babies usually just have reflux MINUS the allergies (and the mucus.) So watch out for mucus in your babies diapers- it's a sign of food protein intolerances/allergies. Stinky gas too. Their gas should be mostly odorless. Okay, so she prescribed Prevacid and told me to think about switching Ella to Neocate formula. I don't want either of those things. I want to keep nursing and stick to this (impossibly hard) diet, and get my mother-bonding time in with my baby. I feel like I got a little cheated not being able to nurse Annie. I really love nursing THAT much. Of course, it all turned out fine, she turned out fine (minus the stinky smell all the time), and if I run out of milk, I'll have no choice but to put her on the formula. But for now I am going to keep sticking to this diet as best I can.

I am also formulating a list of the things I will eat first when I don't have to worry about this problem. It's mostly warm cookies and baked goods, along with pizza and cafe rio.

Anyway, she has never been as crazy/insane miserable as Annie was- but she also has some different symptoms than Annie did. So I'll keep you posted on what I figure out about her allergies. If it's dairy AND wheat and corn, I might have to surrender. That's probably just too hard. But just dairy and wheat, or just dairy, wheat and eggs, now that I can probably do. I would LOVE it if it's not wheat, but something in those noodles really caused a problem. Most likely wheat.

Having said that, she's a pretty little thing, isn't she?
At almost 3 months old she weighed in at 14 lbs 2 oz, and is 23 inches tall. She has started to use her arms/fists to try to grab at things a little. It's so awesome to watch these little people discover things like this. Never gets old. I'm crazy madly in love with her.

2011 is half over!

It's the middle day of the middle month of the year- can you believe 2011 is half over? I can't believe it. Time is flying.

So, first of all, I've been honing my domestic skills lately and trying my hand at canning. I was excited to discover Zaycon Foods- a company that delivers farm-fresh meat for super cheap prices- (similar to Bountiful Baskets) but you have to buy in bulk! 40lbs at a time! I bought 40 lbs of chicken breast (these were some BIG BREASTED CHICKEN, seriously, huge breasts!) and since I don't have much freezer space, decided to try to can most of it. My mother in law who has canned jam (but never raw meat!) came over to help me. We borrowed the pressure cooker from my RS President. It took a lot of time to chunk up the chicken and get the fat off- in fact, my thumb is still a bit numb from being in the shears for so long. (And for the record, I prayed really hard that Heavenly Father would help Ella take a long nap that day, so that I would be able to do this food storage project for my family. Any guesses what happened? She slept 3 hours!! Joy!) Anyway, after two mistakes with the pressure cooker (that set us back 2 hours, but no damage done) we finally managed to do two rounds of chicken, 14 quarts to be exact. It was awesome. If only I could have tasted it.

Back to my canning: Our Relief Society had an activity to do dry canning, and because of the urgency I've been feeling for the last few years to work on our food storage (anyone else? I know many of you have felt this same thing. Don't ignore it!) I decided to can (vacuum seal in mason jars) lots of stuff that doesn't store well. It was so easy. I did M&M's, Reese's minis, chocolate chips, raw almonds, brown sugar, brown rice, taco seasoning, granola, and brownie mix. "Luxury Items" if you will. I just had a feeling that someday I would be thankful that I went to the effort to do it. I bet those little treats will really be special when all we're eating is rice and beans and cracked wheat. (Hopefully it's not really that bad, but who knows.)

In other news, we are swimming almost every day (well, I have to sit out holding the baby a lot, but you get the idea.) It's dang hot here already (boo) but Kalia and Annie are improving every single day on their swimming skills. Bah- who needs swimming lessons? Annie just copies things she sees Kalia do- she finally remembered her swimming skills and can jump off the diving board and swim to the side. She is also coming up to take a breath before she goes back down to swim. That was a big breakthrough since it took her awhile to get that down. Kalia has successfully mastered a dive AND a flip off the diving board, with a little demonstration from yours truly.

Well, we are off to St. George tomorrow. Can't wait to be home.

Phoenix Zoo