Just What I Needed

So I'm sitting in church this morning, half listening to the sermon, half occupying Daniel, and a very specific part of the sermon just happens to catch my ear. It's funny how God always sneaks things like this into my life. It was exactly what I needed to hear. The sermon was about Jesus being on the cross and feeling the weight of all of our sin on Himself and crying out to the Father, "My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?" As the mother of a child with an illness, you experience many hardships. You may lose friends, feel stress about the health of your child, become angry at God, get in fights with your spouse, feel financial hardship while trying to feed your child and pay for doctors' visits and alternative medicine methods out of pocket, etc. Sometimes you may want to cry out those same words. BUT, you will NEVER EVER have to experience what it's like to be forsaken by God or feel the weight of the world's sin on your shoulders. EVER. You know why? Jesus felt it for us. And because God forsook Jesus as he hung there on the cross, feeling the weight of my sin, your sin, everyone's sin who has lived, is living, or will ever live, I will NEVER know what it's like to be forsaken by Him. I needed this reminder. Even though I sometimes feel alone and like God is not with me, carrying me, comforting me, and guiding me, He is catching my attention on a normal Sunday morning in church, as my mind wanders during the sermon while tending to my child's needs...

A Poisoned Mind

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there is definitely a different mind set when you decide to use GAPS to heal the gut for FPIES as opposed to the traditional trial and error and wait til your child "outgrows" it approach. With GAPS, there is some degree of pushing through symptoms, especially when you feel they are related to die off or detox. With the traditional approach, any sign of symptoms tend to cause bells and whistles to go off in the momma's head and she watches much more closely, sometimes pulling a food from the diet. GAPS focuses on healing and sealing the gut, so that any and all foods will someday be tolerated because the "leaks" of "foreign" proteins into the system are gone. The traditional approach focuses on trialing foods and watching for symptoms to find out if that specific protein will cause problems or a reaction. Unfortunately, it doesn't include healing. It's a waiting game. When will the immune system mature enough to not want to attack that specific protein, and when will the T cells finally forget about their earlier attack of that protein. GAPS doesn't recognize rotation diets for the sake of tolerating a food. You start with a VERY tiny amount of the food and if symptoms are seen, you remove it completely and try again in a few weeks after the body has had more time to heal. With the traditional approach, you start with a small amount, then if you get to a point where symptoms show up, but then back off the food to a smaller amount and they go away, you keep that food limited to a specific amount/day. For instance, a child can have 1 Tbs of carrots every other day and have little to no symptoms, but if they have more than that on any given day, or have it 2 days in a row, symptoms return.

I'm sure there are more differences, but these are the ones I have found to be most prominent for me. I am so blessed that I didn't have a long period of time thinking like an FPIES momma, and have transitioned much easier into the GAPS mindset. Everyone has a right to choose how they want to deal with their child's illnesses, so please don't take that as an attack on anyone who has decided to use the traditional approach to FPIES. I am just taking the path that I feel God has led me to, and He is blessing our steps down it so far. I meet more resistance, and get some eye rolls, but Daniel is showing GREAT improvements!


I'm ending with a little rambling from the mind of a sleep deprived momma...

I have a theory, that I have not had time to research or look into, but I'll share it as clearly as I can get it from my brain to my finger tips.

A lot of the foods that are common FPIES triggers are foods that are highly detoxifying or highly fibrous causing them to be harder to digest. My theory is that maybe FPIES is the body's way of saying, "WHOA! I am not ready for a detox/advanced food of this nature!" Our immune systems are there to help clean up and keep us healthy, so the fact that it has been shown to be an immune response makes sense. Detox and die off symptoms are similar, but not as extreme as FPIES symptoms. BUT if the body were being detoxed too quickly and too strongly, i believe it could produce a super strong immune reaction like the one seen with FPIES. Think about the food poisoning analogy that is often used: the body has something "foreign" introduced, and the body gets rid of it/detoxes as quickly as possible (vomit and diarrhea). Due to the leaky guts in these FPIES kiddos, and the immaturity of their immune systems, their detoxing symptoms would be much more severe, like food poisoning. Does that make ANY sense to anyone but myself? It's just a thought that was brought on by reading more about the GAPS process.

Update and Daniel's Current Regimen

As you know, FPIES blogs tend to talk a lot about poop. Just over the past 2 weeks or so, Daniel is finally having normal breastfed baby poops! This is a major step in the right direction! He now poops only 1-2 times a day, as opposed to 10-12, like before.

God has blessed us so richly with the ability to feed me my very expensive diet and to have found good probiotics. As of today, Daniel gets a 1/4 of the children's recommended dose for the probiotic we use and about 1-2 tsp of 100% grassfed beef broth. So far, things are going great, and he's still gaining weight and meeting milestones! As I said above, his poops are normal, and other than a few extra hiccups (common with adjusting to food other than breastmilk) and the normal disturbed sleep from teething, he has no symptoms that warrant alarm. I can't help but say it again that God has led us to the right path for healing! I pray daily that GAPS will be our family's answer to our digestive problems and that God has given us this diet to also help us have the chance that our next child will not have to suffer the way that Daniel has!

We tried using coconut oil for his dry skin a few days ago, and he was chewing on his hands...that night we were reminded where we have come from: screaming, gas, bloody mucousy bright yellow/green diarrhea. BUT, it didn't take him DAYS to recover, it took the 2 hours or so that he was up in the night, and once the diarrhea was over, he slept great and was his same old self the next day. Just a month ago, he would have been "off" and having symptoms for days following any kind of upset to his system. It's amazing to see how far we've come. I thank God every day for giving me such a happy baby in spite of all this mess!

Up next, we plan to finally get brave and try elk and bison, and possibly fish broth. Rotating the broths gives a better variety of nutrients and the good fats and gelatin that help heal the gut. Once we can get Daniel's gut a little more healed, we'll be able to start trying to add some veggies and fruits! I'm hoping we can find a fruit he'll tolerate before his first birthday so he can have a nice frozen, fruity treat on his birthday...if not, I have made a promise to myself to not be disappointed or mope about it. He is healing, and that is more important to me than him having a special birthday treat. He won't remember it anyway!

That's where we're at!

A Surrendered Marriage Challenge

Dealing with the adjustment of becoming a parent to a healthy child adds stress to a marriage. Dealing with the adjustment of becoming the parent of a child who is less than healthy just adds to that stress. I had to go through the mourning process in June of 2010 when we lost our first baby and to my surprise, those feelings came rushing back as I realized I was mourning the loss of my idea of the perfect, healthy child upon finding out Daniel has FPIES. No fun filled dinners and funny, food smeared all over the face pictures for us. No cheerios or the infamous "puffs" every baby loves. No easy, fun, pity-less conversations with people about what foods Daniel eats. As I went through this mourning process, my husband has always been at my side, cheering me on, holding me up, and comforting me, just as he was almost 2 years ago. The amount of stress this monster called FPIES has put on our marriage is beyond what I ever thought we could handle. With God's help, we're still holding strong. In this time of stress, God has pointed me to something wonderful! Intentional by Grace is hosting A Surrendered Marriage Challenge. I have signed up for this in order to help jump start the strengthening process. Whether your marriage is strong or you're barely holding your head above water, prayer can always help!

Little House on the Prairie

If you're a woman, I'm sure you've read the books, at least once in your life time. Lately, I've been longing for the pioneer days. I always used to think I would have been better suited to grow up in the 60's or 70's due to my attachment parenting, breastfeeding, baby wearing, non-vaxing, parenting style, but the deeper I go with my research into using traditional whole foods to heal my son and my family, the more I feel I should have been born long before the 60's. I've become so enthralled with the traditional way of doing things, that I have actually searched our area for real estate on the prairie so I can live on a farm and raise chickens and goats and pigs, and have a root cellar and a dairy cow, and a cute little farm house for Daniel and our future children to grow up in. I've researched canning, preserving, fermenting, kefiring, soaking/sprouting of grains, stocks/broths for healing, becoming a homeopath or herbalist, homeschooling, etc. You name it, I want to learn more about it! When I think about it even more, I feel that God put me in the perfect era. I am different and unique. I am a pioneer of my own, banning together with and learning from others, trying to bring back these most basic of skills and ideals. By allowing this challenging FPIES diagnosis for Daniel, God has ignited a passion in my heart to learn more about how to use the gifts He's given us in a way to improve Daniel's health, my health, and my husband's health. He has given me the ability to share information with members of my family, and has increased my confidence when dealing with resistance. So many wonderful blessings have come from something I once thought to be a doom filled diagnosis! I'm blessed with the fact that I am learning about using these whole foods to heal through the GAPS diet as early in our journey with FPIES as I am. Once you get into the mind set of an FPIES momma, it can be hard to break into thinking like a GAPS momma. I'll be writing more on that in a later post, so now back to my regularly scheduled thoughts...Little House on the Prairie, yes, now where was I? Sleep deprivation anybody? I have recently looked into taking some classes in nutrition based on the traditional whole foods movement, sponsored by the Weston A. Price Foundation via Hawthorn University. As of right now, I don't have the time or money to pursue these classes, but as Jason climbs the corporate ladder and Daniel becomes more able to entertain himself for longer periods of time, I plan to make this dream a reality. In the mean time, I have discovered an amazing website and blog called GNOWFGLINS, Enjoying "God's Natural, Organic, Whole Foods, Grown Locally, In Season". On this site, there is a wealth of information pertaining to GAPS, Whole Foods, and Homesteading, and she offers a membership option where you can take online classes. I have found many other blogs devoted to these subjects also, and plan to compile a list for the sidebar here. I feel like a sponge right now, just soaking up every last drop of information set before me.

Jason and I have had many discussions concerning these subjects over the past few weeks and have decided that we have a goal! We eventually want to live out on the plains, east of our city, but close enough to "come into town" for activities and family events, on a small farm with chickens, dairy goats, possibly pigs, a dairy cow, a rather large organic garden, a greenhouse, and of course Jason had to add he'll need a big truck, lol. This is our ULTIMATE goal, and we know it will take time and a lot of work to get there, but we have also set some short term goals and are working on our plan to make this happen! Who knows, maybe in a few years you all will start calling me "Laura."