Our diet

After spending three months on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet and four months on the GAPS diet we've now come into our own and we're following our diet. I finally have found a group of foods that are allowing Ellie to thrive and that I'm managing to survive on. While I would love to be eating a more expanded diet, I'm not ready to wean so I'm sticking with this and taking it one day at a time.

For the most part our diet is the SCD/GAPS diet in that we don't eat grains or starchy vegetables but we have departed from time to time, like with stevia. The big difference I suppose is that we don't eat the way GAPS is prescribed anymore. We eat relatively low fat, we don't eat organ meats or cook vegetables in loads of lard and we aren't eating much in the way of soups, though that's probably a seasonal thing. And our focus is on lots and lots of fresh produce.

Ding dong the bugs are dead!

This past week we got the results back from Ellie's stool test... I'm thinking this requires a little background.

Back in November Ellie was really, really sick in spite of going off dairy, soy, gluten, eggs, citrus and a number of other foods. We were seeing a chiropractor at the time, who was doing cranial sacral therapy and adjustments to help unkink some stuff that got kinked during Ellie's very long labor. Anyway, the chiropractor also recommended doing a stool test because, she said, kiddos with issues with that many foods are likely not allergic to all of them, but have some underlying gut dysbiosis. Back then I had no idea what gut dysbiosis even was. So we did the test and the results came back showing two bad things: Ellie had major overgrowth of some bad bacteria, including something called klebsiela pneumonia, which was at a pathogenic level of 4 out of 5. The second thing was that Ellie had zero growth of lactobacillus, which is a beneficial bacteria. We put Ellie on antibiotics to kill the bad stuff, and her symptoms greatly improved while she was on it, but as soon as it was done she was sick again. And that's when we discovered the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, which we started Jan. 8.

OK! So fast forward to this summer, when Ellie is still not doing well in spite of having been on the diet for months.

Success in San Diego

Our trip to San Diego was an unbelievable success! I was very apprehensive about taking a trip at all, let alone a trip where we'd be without a kitchen, but it went incredibly smoothly. Ellie woke up once a night to nurse, but didn't complain once of a tummy ache and didn't have any reflux or tummy cramping. She pooped three times on the trip and two of those were formed, which was hugely exciting (you poopologist mamas know what I'm talkin' about).

It's amazing how travel can change your perspective and help you see things in new ways. This is why I love traveling and perhaps a piece of why the past two years - where travel has been either impossible or miserable - have been so difficult for me. Shifting perspective helped me see our situation in a new way, helped me see Ellie in a new light and helped me approach our days differently.

Five days without a kitchen

We are heading out for a vacation! Every time we've gone out of town since we started Ellie on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet and then GAPS she's gotten sick. So it's an understatement to say I've been a little anxious about heading out of town. I actually didn't want to take this trip at all. Ian is going to San Diego for a work conference and he spent months trying to talk me into going along. I told him it would be impossible with our diet ... but Portland has been incredibly gray this summer and finally on a very rainy July day I relented and told him to get us tickets. :)

Working without a diagnosis

We took Ellie in for an abdominal ultrasound and to get some bloodwork done on Monday to look into the theory that she is having some type of problem with her liver, gallbladder or pancreas. The only other experience I've had with an ultrasound was the one I had when I was pregnant with Ellie, in which the ultrasound tech explained what we were looking at and was generally a wealth of information. So I was surprised and frustrated when the tech on Monday wouldn't tell us a thing. She said they'd write up a report and send it to Ellie's doc and only then could I find out the results. Well that took 2 days and the waiting drove me up the wall. Finally I got this email today from her doc: