An Unwanted Dinner Guest

Thanksgiving did  turn out to be delayed for us; Darrel was still feeling miserable from his sickness so we postponed our family gathering.

Based on how Darrel felt, we really should have waited even longer, but he thought he would feel well enough to have Thanksgiving on Friday so we could still visit with my Aunt before she had to go home.

On Friday, though, he left my parents house early and came home without us, where he promptly fell asleep and stayed asleep for 16 hours.

Yep. Probably should have held off on Thanksgiving for another day or two. Oh, well. He’s a really good guy and wanted to try and make it work for all of us, and we all appreciated his effort.

He wasn’t the only one feeling rotten on Friday, either.

The whole family got up in the morning and had breakfast before we loaded up the car to head over to Grandma and PopPop’s house. The kids ate okay at breakfast, but after eating told me they were still hungry.

Jed said he wanted one of his pancakes. Zac said the same. I said okay.

Here’s the problem: I have to make two separate recipes of pancakes for the boys every time we do waffles or pancakes for a meal because of our conflicting dietary needs. Jed’s pancakes are poison for Zac, and Zac’s pancakes are poison for Jed.

Consequently, there’s always a TON of pancakes leftover after feeding them, which I always freeze. My unique little boys happen to think eating a rock-solid frozen pancake is the height of gourmet dining.

I know. Weird.

Thankfully, their two different batches of pancakes look very different; different color, different thickness, different sizes even, thanks to my desire to NOT confuse whose pancakes are whose.

I didn’t think anything of it when both Zac and Jed were wandering around munching on frozen pancakes as I gathered food together to take to my parents house for our Thanksgiving feast.

Darrel, however, even in his “not feeling awesome” stupor, looked more closely. I suddenly heard him say from the living room, “Zac, is that your pancake or Jed’s?”

Uh. Oh.

Zac happily announced “Mine!”, but Darrel insisted he show him where he got the pancake.

He took Daddy to the freezer and pointed directly to JED’S stack of frozen pancakes.

Nevermind that I always put Jed’s on that side of the freezer and Zac’s on the other side. Nevermind that they look completely different. Nevermind that he KNOWS all this.

He grabbed his brothers pancake anyway.

His brothers pancake that has OATS in it (along with a zillion other ingredients Zac hasn’t trialed yet, most of which are corny in some way).

Oy, vey.

Since he hadn’t eaten much, just nibbled on the edges, we hoped he had dodged a bullet and wouldn’t react.

Not so lucky. A few hours later, he started vomiting.

Poor Zac threw up three times on Friday morning, and barely ate any Thanksgiving dinner. He was perkier by the time we ate, but didn’t have much appetite.

That night, however, he was a hungry boy!

Ever since then, of course, his poop has been rotten.

We’d finally gotten him to remember to go to the potty when he needed to poop about 90% of the time; ever since Friday, we’ve had accidents.

Boo.

All in all, it was not a terrible reaction. He hasn’t had blood in his stool, nor any acidic diaper rash burns. He did vomit three times, but there was no dehydration or lethargy. I’m grateful it was a fairly mild FPIES reaction.

But still.

We’ve only managed to trial ground black pepper on him since AUGUST! That’s FOUR MONTHS of (basically) a food trial hiatus due to illnesses, pickiness, and reactions. I’m absolutely going nuts here! My child needs to trial more foods! I can’t do food trials in these conditions! ARGH!!!!

Oh, and to cap it all off, on Monday we had to run in to town to pick up our chicken feed delivery. On the way home we swung by the co-op to pick up some potatos and bananas for the coming week.

Jed has been begging for pretzels for a couple of months now. A Mr. Rogers Neighborhood retro episode he saw visited the pretzel making “factory”, and he’s convinced he needs to eat a pretzel.

I’ve looked and looked for pre-packaged pretzels he could have, to no avail. I’ve even looked for recipes for pretzels I could make for him, and found a couple of potentials, but haven’t had the time or energy to experiment with making them.

As has become usual for him at the co-op, he ran to the pretzels and asked if he could have every.single.bag.he.found.

As usual, I said “NO” to every.single.bag.he.found.

Until he held up one I didn’t recognize. I asked him to hand it to me. The ingredients were simple enough: spelt, malt, salt, baking soda, and soybean oil. Despite the fact that I know wheat gives him the Meanies, he has eaten spelt before with no issues. This is strange, of course, because spelt IS a wheat. But I didn’t know that in our early days of FructMal, and so I thought I was giving him a wheat-free muffin at the co-op whenever they had a vegan option available.

It is the ONLY store-bought bakery-style treat the poor child has ever had in his life. So he had eaten TONS of those muffins made of spelt before I learned they were wheat. Since he had never shown any reactions to those muffins, I decided to avoid spelt in general, but to not take away the occasional muffin from the co-op.

Looking at these pretzels, I figured a small quantity of them spelt-wise would not be a problem. The glaring problem was the soybean oil.

Jed has MSPI (Milk/Soy Protein Intolerance). Soy is kind of a no-no.

BUT. Some people report that soybean OIL is okay for their MSPI kiddos, and we haven’t had a soy exposure for…too long to even remember (I think it was before Zac was born!).

So a trial seemed in order.

I bought Jed the pretzels, made it clear it was a trial, and he happily began munching down on them in the car ride home.

Shortly after arriving home, I told him he had eaten enough pretzels for the day, and took the bag away, leaving him the few remaining on his plate.

A few minutes later, Zac came running up to us exclaiming “Now I love pretzels, too, Mommy!”

Yep. You guessed it. The minute our backs were turned, Zac snuck one of Jed’s pretzels.

(Head, meet wall. Bang here, please.)

Long story short, no vomiting ensued, but his diapers are now messier than they were before.

And then Tuesday morning Jed informed me that after eating the pretzels, he had a stomachache all evening (which would explain his horrible dinner appetite on Monday night) AND that he had a “diarrhea poop” just after he woke up on Tuesday. He said it was yellow and liquid.

You know what, y’all?

I am SO FREAKING SICK TO DEATH OF THE SIMPLEST THING IN THE WORLD – EATING – BEING SUCH A HARD CUSS WORD CUSS WORD CUSS WORD THING FOR MY FAMILY TO CUSS WORD DO.

So that’s that. FPIES was an unwanted dinner guest at Thanksgiving, soy and oats are evil and can kiss my lily white heinie, and I have to work up the courage to keep doing food trials for me. Because, did I mention it? Before Thanksgiving, I reacted to ROMAINE LETTUCE. Lettuce. Romaine. Nauseous for hours.

I hate food.