Ellie had another bad night last night so we just took it easy today and focused on Stage 1 soups with raw egg yolks mixed in. I think I am having a really hard time figuring out the probiotic piece of things - both in terms of what types of probiotics Ellie can handle and how much.
After discovering the hard way that it was way too soon for yogurt, I focused exclusively on sauerkraut juice and since she's still been doing poorly I've been wondering if I'm even doing the kraut juice wrong. I had been giving Ellie 1 tsp. per bowl of soup. Today I backed off that dosing. I skipped kraut juice entirely at breakfast (for her) and she had a great morning. I was able to take her out for a stroller walk in this gorgeous spring weather and she did not protest being in the stroller once. Very unusual! At lunch I tried just 1/2 tsp. of kraut juice with her soup. Within 20 minutes the face rash that had been fading away all morning was back with a vengeance, she was incredibly fussy and complaining that her tummy hurt. Aha! So even 1/2 tsp. is too much.
I am very lucky to be working with a Holistic Health Counselor who herself has been on SCD and GAPS so we've been trying to work out this mystery together. Today she suggested using a dropper to dose out the kraut juice and start with just a few drops. It's hard for me to believe that something as innocuous as sauerkraut juice - which some people eat glopped onto hot dogs - would need to be dosed out by a dropper. But one thing I've learned over the past year is to never underestimate how sensitive Ellie's system is.
I am so anxious to get all of this sorted out so we can move forward in the stages and move on with introducing some new foods.
Please keep us posted on how the dropper method is working! I'm backing off all irritating foods for Katie the next couple of days, the I think I'm going to use the dropper to introduce certain foods too. I'm soooo disappointed that she can't have my kraut right now!! Our poor sick kiddos. :(
ReplyDeleteI have heard this over and over: probiotics are very powerful, especially homemade LF foods.
ReplyDeleteFYI: the sauerkraut you see on hot dogs is probably not LF and it's almost surely pasteurized, i.e. dead. I would be surprised if there were any beneficial bacteria there.
Glad you figured this out!
Our poor sick kiddos indeed! I put two drops of kraut juice on Ellie's soup this morning and she promptly stopped eating her soup! Hmmmm. So apparently she's made the connection too. At lunchtime I snuck two drops on a spoonful of soup and fed it to her. Nothing terrible happened after that. :) I guess I need to be treating the humble sauerkraut with the respect it deserves. :)
ReplyDeleteHi Annie! I am so happy to have found you! I am on the yahoo group too. I am about to start intro for me and my nursing 27 mo son whom is in the 3rd percentile for height and about 1 percentile for weight and hasn't gained in months. I am excited because I think GAPS is the answer for us. I will be following your blog, I made one too: http://realfoodhealing.blogspot.com/ and will hopefully have the energy to post about our journey. I will be praying for you and Ellie :)
ReplyDeleteHi Janelle! I'm so glad you found me too! Failure to thrive was one of the big reasons we started the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (which we did for 101 days before switching to GAPS intro 15 days ago). In that time, Ellie has gone from below the 3rd percentile for weight to above the 10th!!! SCD/GAPS can do huge things for failure to thrive in my opinion. Both Breaking the Vicious Cycle and the GAPS book address FTT. I wish our pediatrician had read these books!!!
ReplyDeleteWell I hope intro goes well for you and I look forward to reading about your progress. The early stages are tough (at least for us) but I really do think it's worth it and totally safe to do with an older nursling. Keep in touch!