Oh boy. After quite a few consecutive nights of peaceful, quiet, calm bedtimes, Ellie has been refusing to go to sleep the past two nights. This could mean anything. Reflux? Food reaction? Die-off? Teething? Doing GAPS with a toddler involves a lot of detective work.
So I go back to the food journal. OK, yesterday, four things changed. It was the first day I gave Ellie a second dose of probiotics (at lunch in addition to after dinner), it was also the first day I allowed her to have a tiny string of sauerkraut (in addition to the kraut juice), it was the first time she had more than one strawberry (she had 3 or 4 I think) and I foolishly made dinner a tiny bit spicy, adding chipotle powder.
So, what was it? One of those things? Or none of them? I have no idea. Poor Ian was in charge of bedtime last night because I went out to a Naked Lady party (not as sexy as it sounds - it was a clothing swap :) So when I got home Ellie was still up and I ended up doing bedtime anyway.
Tonight the same scenario repeated itself, with Ellie instantly becoming hysterical the second I finished my lulaby and left the room. So what did today have in common with yesterday? We did two doses of probiotics again. She did not have any sauerkraut, but she did have a tiny bit of spicy food again. And she had more strawberries. Oh my God local strawberries are in and I simply could not refuse her that simple pleasure. They were amazing and it was hot out for the first time this year and it just felt right. So looking these two days over one would conclude that it was either the probiotics, the spicy food, or the strawberries.
But that would not be taking into account that Ellie is a toddler and still getting her teeth. This is not fair! After quite a bit of crying Ian made the guess that it could be teeth and went and rubbed some homeopathic teething liquid on her gums and Ellie calmed down. (We cannot give her Motrin or Tylenol because they have sugar in them, which is so unfair.) We had both noticed her touching her mouth more than usual today, but weren't sure what to make of that.
With a kid with a gazillion food intolerances it's really easy to see everything through the prism of food. If something goes wrong, something had to be wrong with the diet, our thinking goes. But these kiddos are like any kiddo, they get teeth (which, I can only imagine, hurts like hell), they have bad dreams, they get hungry, they get scared. Sometimes I am pouring over a food journal, beating my head against a wall trying to figure out what I fed Ellie that made her sick, when it's simply her teeth.
Then again, what do I know? It's all a guessing game.
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