Days 2-5 - WOOF!

So day 1 felt oh so manageable and exciting and then Ellie and I woke up the next morning feeling like a truck had hit us. I was nauseous all that day and Ellie was a WRECK. Unconsolable crying, telling me her tummy hurt, etc. etc. I could barely get it together to make soup. Oy. Thank goodness Ian had returned home from his business trip on Day 1 and was able to take Ellie for a few hours the afternoon of Day 2 so I could lay down and try not to throw up.

One of the things I find fascinating about all of this is that I came to SCD and then GAPS having "no health issues" of my own. I was "perfectly healthy." But the reality is that my gut health was in bad shape, and then I passed that bad ecology on to my babe, who manifested much worse symptoms than I ever had. Her issues have included over her short 21 months on Earth: reflux, failure to thrive, a gazillion food allergies/intolerances, stomach cramping, aversion to eating and some symptoms of dyspraxia, which I had never even heard of until I read the GAPS book. But when I look back on things, I did actually have quite a few health issues - they were just minor and chronic and typically not something you'd go to the doctor for. But as I'm seeing those symptoms fall away through SCD and now GAPS I can see how truly unhealthy I was. I've lost weight, my cycle is much more regular that it used to be (it took me two years to conceive Ellie), I rarely have trouble with PMS or cramps anymore (I used to be bedridden for a day every time I got my period) and the minor reflux I used to be annoyed by at bedtime is gone. So hurrah for health!


Ellie has been extremely fussy since starting the diet but I feel like the fussiness is gradually decreasing every day. Yesterday in our food/symptoms journal I wrote that she was having spurts where she was the fussiest I've seen her and then periods where she's been the happiest and most playful I've seen her. So I'm hoping we'll keep seeing the balance tip toward fun and playful!

The hardest time of day is night and morning. According to Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, our bodies detox overnight and through the morning til about 10 a.m. Ellie has always been an awful sleeper and she is waking frequently in the night, telling me her tummy hurts. She nurses and goes back down, which tells me she's not having a food reaction, because when that's happening she can't go back down after nursing. In the past four days she's been waking an average of 3 times a night, which means I'm not getting more than 2 or maybe 3 hours of sleep in a row. Exhausting. By morning we are both a cranky mess and I've been feeling morning-sickness-type nauseousness after we get up. My response to that is normally to get something in my stomach right away, but I'm trying to follow the advice to let your body detox until 10 (we usually make it til 9).  I find if I just sit down and drink some water it passes and I'm able to get up and make soup.

One of the most confusing things for me about the GAPS intro is how to know when to move on. Before we started Intro, Ian and I sat down and laid out a roadmap of how we would move through the stages. We said we'd move on from one stage to another when Ellie had: slept through the night for three nights, woken up happy and not told us her tummy had hurt for three days. Hahahaha. This is feeling like an unrealistic goal right now. We are getting sick of soup and I am itching to move on. I don't want to rush too fast, but I also see my baby girl getting a little skinnier and it's making me want to advance. Ellie is allergic to eggs so I am especially anxious about adding egg yolks in Stage 2. I have some duck eggs sitting in the fridge. I'm hoping those will go over better than chicken eggs have in the past. I plan to add some veggies to try to make soup acceptable for another day or two before making any big changes.

Taking a deep breath, and going one minute at a time...