My Bloody Boys

Oh, blood.  I never thought Motherhood would bring so much blood into my life.

Yesterday Mr. Charm’s first poopy diaper of the day had visible blood in it.  As I’ve stated before, that has only ever happened for him if he consumes dairy.  So I called the Geek at work to ask him if he knew of any inadvertent dairy consumption by Mr. Charm.

Nope.  He said it was always possible, of course, that the little scamp had taken a swig of his coffee (with cream) without him knowing, but he hadn’t seen anything for sure.

Hmm.

It was a possibility, but a stolen swig of coffee with cream shouldn’t be enough to put blood in his diaper.  I looked a little closer at some of the new foods we’re feeding him, based on our new Fructose Free diet.

Mr. Charm loves bread.  Flat out LOVES it.  This new diet forbids wheat, due to the fructans.  So I have searched high and low and read just about every-single-loaf-of-bread I can find in my area, trying to find him some safe bread that he can have.

Finally, success!  In the frozen section of the health food store I found a Sourdough-Rye bread.  A whopping 15  t-h-i-n  slices costs about $5, but he LOVES it!

He eats at least 5 slices a day, slathered with all-natural peanut butter and he is in food heaven.  So of course, despite the cost, we buy it for him.

I looked a little closer at the ingredients, thinking that maybe, somehow, I had misread the ingredients.  Nope.  It is, in fact, dairy-free, egg-free, and fructose/fructan-free.

HOWEVER.  I DID miss the part where it says “Manufactured on equipment THAT PROCESSES PRODUCTS containing wheat, milk and soy.”

So cross-contamination has finally reared its ugly little sneaky face in the Cradle Rocking Household.  

And maybe THAT explains why, for the last three days, Mr. Charm has come up to us several times per day pointing to his tummy and saying “Ow”.

Ugh.

I suppose now I need to start work on a wheat-free, dairy-free, egg-free Rye bread recipe. Fun times.

Meanwhile, Mr. Happy has been teething again.  It seems like he’s always teething, I know, but there’s general gnawing on things teething and then there’s the active, clenched jaw in pain, moaning, clamping down on every-thing-he-sees teething.  Right now, he’s doing the latter.

Well, we can’t do Oragel, we can’t whip out the drugstore children’s Ibuprofen and dose him like crazy, we can’t do most of the things people do for teething pain because they’ll basically be causing us to do a food trial and we just aren’t ready for that yet.  

He’s on the tail end (I think/hope) of reactions that started back in November; this part, I think, is to whatever fillers were in the antibiotics I had to take in December.  His symptoms are getting better, but he’s still reacting a bit – and he needs some gut rest time before we can attempt anything new.  Right now, even with the slight reactions he’s having, it’s highly likely he could react to something new simply because he’s already in the middle of a reaction – not because the new thing is actually a problem.

But of course, if he reacts to the new thing for whatever  reason, his body will remember that it reacted to it and will forevermore (or for at least 18-24 months) react to it.  Again, even if it might have been okay if we’d waited until his little body wasn’t out of whack.

So, no vanilla or cloves on the gums, no acetaminophen (we haven’t given him that before, so we don’t know if it is okay or not), no nothing.

Except ice.

So two days ago I gave him a mesh feeder with ice cubes in it to teethe on.

He chomped down, gnawed, drooled, sucked, and for the first time all day, I didn’t have to listen to moaning.  Score!

As soon as that ice cube was gone, he got another one.  And another one.

And suddenly, the SCREAM came out of nowhere.

I ran over to him, thinking he had clunked his head on something in that instant my back was turned, but he wasn’t laying on the floor and his head had no red spots.  I picked him up and cooed at him, trying to comfort him, and in less than a minute, he was fine again.  Not smiling, not really happy, but not screaming.

I bent down to get his mesh teether for him and noticed…something on the mesh bag.

I looked closer.

Blood.

Holy smokes!

Immediately I turned his little face to me and started prying his lips apart.  Sure enough, on his upper gum line, directly over his two little cute teeth, was a nifty little cut. 

I wiped away the blood and snuggled him close for a bit, and eventually all was fine and happy again.

Somehow, he’d managed to bite SO HARD that he forced the ice remnants to the other end of the feeder and bit himself through the mesh until he bled. 

THAT is a totally new “teething” issue for me.

I felt rotten for him, but there wasn’t much I could do except offer him ice – which he refused.  Smart kid.

Furthermore, for the last four days, he’s been comfort nursing like Cah-RAZ-y.  I’m talking nursing every hour to hour and a half all day…and all night.

Did I mention how I’ve been sick with Tonsillitis?  So waking up like that is seriously cramping my “get Mama better fast” abilities.

So, two nights ago (the night before Mr. Charm’s lovely diaper display), upon nursing him for the four hundred eleventy-ith time that day, I looked at the Geek and said “What can we do?”

We talked it out.  It was midnight.  I’m just getting over being sick.  I was exhausted.

We didn’t want acetominophen to be ruined because he reacted to it simply because he’s reactive right now.  We didn’t want to try any vanilla or cloves, because we didn’t know how effective those would be AND they’d basically be a food trial, too.  We didn’t want to try Oragel or any of the other teething medications we used on Mr. Charm for the same reasons (plus, I don’t know if we even have any of those in the house any more!).

But Ibuprofen…well, see, now, we KNOW he has slow build, chronic reactions to Ibuprofen.  We know it doesn’t get very bad very quickly.  It’s already  an unsafe thing for him to have.  And he’s already  reacting to something in the antibiotics.

We also know that in the short term?  That stuff WORKS.  

So we gave him a dose of Ibuprofen.

And you know what?  He nursed every TWO hours that night, instead of every hour to hour and a half.

We all woke up the next morning feeling much better about life in general, due to not being quite as sleep deprived.

I really don’t want to give him any more.  I spent the whole day mentally beating myself in the head for giving it to him the first time.  I kept trying to remind myself that I was exhausted, sick, tired, and stuck between a rock and a hard place and that the Geek and I made the call together…but it still felt AWFUL to give my little stinker-poo something I KNOW doesn’t work for his little body.

I’m sorry if he has to live in pain for a bit.  I’ll comfort nurse him all he wants from here on out.  But I just can’t bring myself to give him more Ibuprofen.

I need his little gut to heal and rest for a bit so we can try some foods on him.  He’s desperate to eat; we’re desperate for him TO eat.  I’d love to add something new to my elimination diet.

So, sorry, sweetie.  I hope you learned not to bite so hard on those mesh feeders, cause baby boy?  They’re all the pain relief you’re going to get for now.

Anyone else ever been in a position where you gave your kiddo something unsafe and you knew it?  Anyone have a good Sourdough-Rye bread recipe to share?