I hate it when I’m right.
(Well, not really. I like being right most of the time. It just stinks when I’m right about something bad.)
Back in February I stopped Zac from eating some kitty litter, and wrote about WHY you don’t let an FPIES kid eat kitty litter and/or cat poo. The litter hasn’t been an issue since then; I immediately moved the kitty litter boxes and they’ve been out of sight/out of mind for Zac ever since.
Until Wednesday.
The little scamp has taught himself how to climb off the bed without help (also without sharing this new talent with his Mama and Daddy), and woke up before me that morning. He chose to not wake me up and instead take the opportunity to go exploring!
He explored his little self right into the laundry room, which now houses the kitty litter.
Jed, being the protective big brother that he is, was also awake and ran immediately to get me. “Zac go!” he told me.
In my stupor, I didn’t follow him right away. After turning and seeing an empty bed, though, I went on instant High Alert. “Zachariah! Where are you?” I called out as I ran from the bedroom. (He can’t answer yet, but often will come to you when you call his name.)
He didn’t come.
Instead, I had to track him down, and I found him in the laundry room, right in front of a big, steaming pile of cat poo.
Ugh!
I grabbed him up and said “No, Zac. Don’t touch that.”
His diaper felt a little full, which is normal for first thing in the morning, so we went to the diaper changing table. When I laid him down, I realized he was cupping his hand as though he were holding something.
After forcing his fingers open, I found a piece of chocolate and wondered: Now where did he get a piece of chocolate? (No, my brain does NOT work really well first thing in the morning, why do you ask?)
I wiped his hands and threw the ‘chocolate’ away, and suddenly it dawned on me what he had actually been holding.
Damn!
Sure enough, the diapers started up – again. Green, mucousy, bloody.
We’d JUST gotten to the point that his diapers were no longer burning his butt from the almond milk ingestion last week! His heinie was FINALLY healing up!
And the little stinker decided to eat some cat poop and screw it all up again.
As you might imagine, Wednesday was NOT an especially great day for me.
On top of the emotional deflation of ANOTHER FPIES reaction, Zac always comfort nurses when he’s not feeling well, which means a good portion of my day was spent sitting on the couch, nursing a cranky baby.
Did you know that those lovely “bonding hormones” that are released when nursing a baby are still in full effect even 15 months after birth?
That has to be what is happening to me; after flying home last week, I was a zombie. Work drains me! Darrel carried a lot of the slack over the weekend, but come Tuesday morning I was on my own. Zac was comfort nursing from teething and residual FPIES reactions all of those days, and the only time of the day I could get anything done (read: laundry or kitchen cleaning) was after bedtime.
So I thought I just hadn’t gotten enough rest over the weekend and was burning the candle at both ends at the beginning of the week…until yesterday.
Wednesday night, deflated, exhausted and just flat ‘over it’, I went to bed with Zac. At 7:45 p.m. I was out like a light, and the kids and I didn’t wake up until 8:00 a.m.
Now, I know I woke up enough to feed Zac throughout the night, but if you ask me, I remember nothing during those 12 hours and 15 minutes.
That’s some good sleepin’, right there!
Yet on Thursday, every time I sat down to nurse Zac on the couch I felt myself trying to fall asleep.
Suddenly I remembered after Jed was born; I was nursing him in the NICU and kept trying to fall asleep. I mumbled something about how I didn’t know why I was so tired (snort, choke, giggle – anyone who has ever had the displeasure of being a guest of the NICU will shake their heads at that one!) and the nurse told me it was the result of the lovely “relaxation, bonding hormones” being released.
I’m sure the outstanding numbers of narcotics I was on and the one hour naps I was allowed had something to do with it, too.
I’m guessing I haven’t been this tired in a long time, and being so tired, combined with that flood of “feel good drugs” provided by my own body are making me dang near catatonic at this point.
All of which is to say…that’s why there was no post yesterday. I just couldn’t wake up enough to finish the recipe I planned to post. Oops.
Anyway, now we wait for baseline – AGAIN – and continue on as planned.
Darrel and I are thinking of ways to install serious baby-proofing in the house; if we do what we’re talking about, I’ll post about it so you can see what FPIES baby proofing looks like!
Oh, and all this comfort nursing is having an effect on Jed, too. Jealous, much?
Every single time I’m not nursing Zac, Jed has to be physically ON TOP OF ME. When I AM nursing Zac, he often will come up to us, look at Zac and say “Stop eating, Zac!” He’s taken to actually laying on me and his brother when Zac is nursing, too. He has a flat-out panic attack when I leave the living room in the morning to put Zac down for a nap.
Zac nursing on the left…Jed laying on the right. This is normal now.
The icing on this jealous-of-Mommy-and-Zac cake came this afternoon, though, when Jed informed me that HE wanted to “eat the other boobie”!
The child hasn’t nursed in almost two years, and suddenly he wants to nurse? I was confused for a second, and then it dawned on me…this is perfect three year old logic. Nursing Zac is what keeps Mommy from spending more time with me, therefore, if *I* nurse, too, I get to spend more time with Mommy!
Ah…well, maybe I handled it wrong, but I said “Sure, go ahead!” and offered up the other side. He latched on, tried to nurse for about fifteen seconds, then popped off and was done. I guess he’s forgotten how to do it, and it probably wasn’t as satisfying as he hoped it would be.
At least I avoided saying “No” yet again…and in honor of his obvious need for more “me”, we spent Zac’s nap time playing hard in the living room. We made tents, train tracks, tunnels, and the tickle monster visited for a while, too.
Hope you all have a good weekend, and see you back on Monday – hopefully with a non-reactive baby, a “Mama-full” toddler, and a little more rest!
Were your older kids ever jealous of the time you have to give your nursing babies? How did you deal with that? And what is the grossest thing your kiddos have ever eaten?
Oh geez, that’s gotta suck. Zac, stop eating the wrong stuff buddy!
Hang in there, OK?
I thought this might make you smile: I don’t know if you noticed from Facebook but I spent the past month(-ish) having saline infusions three times a week at my local hospital. The idea was that if they did actually make me feel better (the rationale is that I have a low blood volume, so it might help that) we could get it done at home, unfortunately that plan fell in a heap for stupid bureaucratic reasons so they had to stop after the hospital part was finished, but for four weeks I did feel a bit better.
When you go to hospital for just infusions it’s a bit odd but basically it’s almost like they “admit” you to the day unit for just a few hours – you get the hospital bracelet with your name on it, and so forth. When they come around to hook up the IV they have to ask what I’m allergic to – my hospital band is red because I have allergies. Now my reactions take a half page to list and I don’t know the entire list off the top of my head, but I figured what they really actually want to know is whether I’m allergic to the saline IV they’re about to hook up or anything relevant so I got in the hang of answering “I’m allergic to tons of stuff, but not latex or saline!” which seemed like the most useful and short answer I could think of.
To my immense surprise, about half the time the nurses joked back “You can’t be allergic to saline!” which is probably technically true, but I remembered reading about Zac’s FPIES reaction to the corn that’s in saline when he was first diagnosed. So thanks to Zac and your blog, there are about 10 Australian nurses who now know a little bit about FPIES and know that you can have an allergic reaction to what’s in the bag of saline.
I just thought you’d like to know of that little ripple of information …. none of the nurses admitted they had ever heard of FPIES before so I don’t know what the local families do but I’m feeling sorry for them!! I’m used to docs not knowing about my own rare diseases but I’m big enough to speak up for myself so it feels different, somehow.
Anyway, thanks for providing that little bit of knowledge so I could spread it around when the topic came up!!
PS
Mum has a hideous-parenting story of having to dig a half-eaten snail out of my mouth from when she put me down in the front yard as a kid. Eww!! I still think cat poo is worse though…
Ew…snails?! Gross. Of course, I’m from Houston originally and the closest thing to a snail I ever saw as a child was a SLUG. THOSE are absolutely disgusting!
I didn’t see that, Ricky! OMG – how are you doing now? Sorry bureaucracy interfered with your medical treatment. 🙁 Any hope of that clearing up soon?
LOL at your story, too! I’ve also gotten good at the “short version” of certain questions. That is so awesome that you educated nurses about FPIES, especially when you were being treated yourself! If I could, I’d give you a big ol’ hug right now! Thank you!!
We have many FPIES Mom’s from Australia on our boards. Some of them have good medical help, many of them do not. I’m not familiar with how Australia’s medical system works (if it’s more American or Canadian in style) but it seems like often they are stuck with whatever doctor they have and can’t see specialists. So I know they will appreciate you spreading the word in your corner of the country! You rock, Ricky! And I really hope you get the treatment you need.