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:

Getting closer to the answer?

In the past week we have been thinking and learning a lot about fats and fat digestion and it feels like we may be inching closer to figuring out what is going wrong with Ellie's digestion. Several times in the past week I've actually uttered the phrase "what if this is the last piece of the puzzle!?!"

Over the course of months it's become apparent that Ellie cannot tolerate saturated fats. The foods she has reacted worst to are very high in saturated fat: ghee, coconut oil, beef, tallow, cacao butter and eggs. A couple of weeks ago I trialed cacao butter in my diet and it was immediately apparent it was a problem. Ellie suddenly wouldn't go down for bed, telling us her tummy hurt and having the jerky cramping abdomen during sad awakenings overnight. I had thought duck eggs were fine, but Ellie hadn't been doing well for about a month and so three days ago I pulled the duck eggs and suddenly she was a different person. The last two nights she's slept nearly 12 hours in a row! Hallelujah.

Navigating murky waters

I have been hesitant to write lately because a lot of things have happened that I haven't really know what to think and/or say about them. We've received new information about Ellie's health, we've had family in town, we traveled out of town, Ellie and I both came down with a stomach virus, we marked 6 months on SCD/GAPS, we've had several food trials fail, Ellie has been riding a constipation/diarrhea roller coaster that's made everyone miserable, we started a new supplement, we've seen a new doctor and been referred to yet another doctor. Bleh. It's been an exhausting month.

It feels like the energy shifted about a month ago when we got back the results for Ellie's IGG allergy test. It came back showing us nothing. Nothing we didn't know already, anyway. The ONLY food she had a reaction to was chicken eggs, which we had already confirmed as an allergy through a skin prick test at her mainstream allergist's office and subsequent elimination and challenge. The test showed nothing else, and we were shocked. Nothing for dairy, nothing for gluten, nothing for coconut, nothing for citrus - shocked.

2

It happened. My baby girl turned 2. I can't believe it. The past couple of weeks have been crazy - crazy busy and also just crazy emotionally as I try to process the fact that Ellie is 2. There may or may not have been a moment where I sobbed to Ian "I can't believe she's 2 and she's not better yet!"

These types of milestones have been hard for me from the beginning. When Ellie was a baby I created imaginary timelines to reassure myself that things would normalize soon. For example, there was a phase where I had to put Ellie in the Ergo and walk up and down the house, BLASTING an Irish lullaby CD while bouncing up and down with! a boob in her mouth - sometimes for a half an hour or more - just to get her to sleep. And she never slept more than 30 minutes. During that time I told myself she'd be an easier baby after her first birthday. Lots of people had told me tough babies mellow out by their first birthday. Well those people hadn't met Ellie. By her first birthday we had barely begun our elimination diet journey and hadn't even figured out she was allergic to eggs.