No Pampering For You, Mama!

 
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As a busy Mama of two active boys, smack dab in the middle of house construction, busy learning about this new chronic condition my son(s) have, I don’t often have the chance to pamper myself.

So it was a special treat last week sometime when I pulled out an emery board, filed a few of my jagged, scratchy nails, and slathered on some hand cream.  Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine that such a simple thing would one day become a luxury!

The pampering moment over, I quickly went back to the work of my life: taking care of my family.

In my last post, I wrote about how I was unsure if Mr. Happy was experiencing transition symptoms to Elecare, or FPIES build symptoms to the Elecare.  I said I had posed the question to the experts in the field, the other FPIES Mama’s on the BabyCenter message board.

They answered.  Am I ever glad they did!

At first, they were talking about how perhaps Mr. Happy ingested something he has a trigger to, and I got the distinct impression they were talking of a baby that eats solid foods.  So I responded with a reminder that my son is still only 12 weeks old, and is not on solid foods yet.

At that point, the answers got more specific: he could have accidentally ingested a crumb from something I ate while holding him, it could be something from our soap, laundry detergent, etc.

Suddenly a lightbulb went off in my head: Mr. Happy is taking after his big brother and is already teething.  EVERYTHING goes in his mouth right now for that reason alone.  Plus, we’ll touch his hands, kiss his hands, and then what happens?  BAM!  Right in his mouth the little hands go!

Well, what could it have been?  What could  we have somehow tainted him with?  I thought and thought and just couldn’t come up with…Oh. My. Gosh.  I think I have it!

What do I think could possibly be causing a reaction in my dear, sweet Mr. Happy?  See for yourself:

At least we know they’re telling the truth about their ingredients!

Please, dear readers, note the bottom of the bottle: “Natural Colloidal Oatmeal”.

OAT. MEAL.

Please indulge me as I remind you that the top FPIES trigger foods are dairy, soy, rice, and OATS.

Head. Slap. Moment.

It’s not definitive.  He may actually be  having build symptoms.  Based on the brilliant advice and deductive skills of the FPIES Mama’s, I will continue to watch Mr. Happy for reactions.  If he gets better and returns to his ‘happy place’ where he was last week, then I can narrow it down to an accidental ingestion of something – probably my hand cream.  If he does NOT get better and continues to react this way, then we may have to consider that he’s a rare FPIES kiddo who reacts to incredibly small corn proteins in elemental formula.

At least I have a clue, now.  And in case you meet me in person, just pretend you don’t notice my chapped, cracked, rough hands.  Apparently I have no safe hand creams to use.  Yet.

Diagnosis: Transition? Build Symptoms? Don’t Know!

 
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Mr. Happy seemed to be doing better on the Elecare last week.  He had a few days of Happy Baby – no clinginess, no vomit, very little spit up, doing great!  I thought it was just the transition to elemental formulas, and that he had pushed through to a new baseline.

The last few days, he’s been clingy.  He’s got a wheeze to his breathing.  He’s been spitting up a lot.  He’s vomited twice.  His poop has been mucousy again, and today, I spotted what could be a bit of blood in it.

Sigh…

Are those all transition symptoms?  Or is he back to having FPIES build symptoms?

Looking back with the benefit of FPIES vision, we noted that he had mucousy stools – sometimes with blood, wheezing, lots of spit up and occasional vomiting before his acute FPIES reactions.  So, those are  his build symptoms as of now.

But then there’s this whole complication of transition!  I don’t know what those symptoms are yet!  I’ve asked the experts on the message boards, and am now waiting for answers.  At this point, they’re the only ones who might know the answer.  Our allergist had never even heard of transition before.

I *really* hope this is just a fluke transition symptom experience, and that what I saw in his diaper wasn’t blood.  Still, I have my fingers crossed and am praying hard right now!

Join me?

Has anyone else gone through transition to elemental formulas?  How did it go for you?  Is this normal?

Because NO Weekend is Complete Without a Trip to the Hospital!

 
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We started off today with a bit of excitement and trepidation…today, we were going to get Mr. Charm his First Haircut.

Shocking, I know.

I still don’t really want to cut his hair, but even I can see that it hangs in his eyes and bothers him.  I’m just sad that he won’t look like a baby any more, even though I know he is about as far from a baby as can be!  I’m just not ready to let him grow up, honestly.

So, I sucked it in and made the plan: we were going to take him to the barber shop where the Geek had his first ever hair cut.

If I have to do it, I’m making an event of it, doggone it!

So, we got up, had breakfast, went through the long process of trying to get three adults and two children dressed and ready to go, and were just about to head out the door when we realized…it was quiet.  Too quiet.

When it’s quiet with Mr. Charm around, it can only mean trouble.

We went looking, and we didn’t have to look very far.  He was just around the corner from us, a mere 45 seconds after the last adult had left the room, digging through my Mom’s purse.  He was holding a travel Aleve tube in his hands, one that Mom uses to stick a few random medications she only needs occasionally.

And it was empty of all but one pill.

ARGH!

Will this kid never learn?

Quick!  Triage the situation!  Check his mouth!  There are pills.  Swipe them out.  What pills were in the bottle?  How many of them were there?  Rinse his mouth out under the faucet.  Call Poison Control.  And…you guessed it – head to the ER.

Again.

The problem is that Mom doesn’t need these pills regularly; she keeps about five or six Librax in her purse for “just in case” situations.  So even if we’d been able to get an accurate count of the pills we swiped out of his mouth, there was no way of knowing if she started with five, or six, or even seven pills.  So, no way to know if he’d actually been able to swallow one or not!

Better safe than sorry, the Poison Control people say.  The effects of this medication would be tiredness, unresponsiveness, and lowered heart rate.  Possibly nothing bad, but possible scary stuff.  So, while Mom and the Geek load the kids and the car, I quick make up two bottles of formula, grab some leftovers and stick it all in a cooler (so Mr. Charm and I can eat on the road, if necessary), and grab my breastpump.

Off we go, only this time, when we checked in they were busy and we had to wait for a room.

While we were checking in, Mr. Charm was clinging to the Geek.  He swatted at me when I tried to hug, kiss, or even touch him, didn’t want to get down and play, wasn’t saying “HI” to every single person he saw…well, that seems unresponsive to me, right?  So we were glad we came.

However, in the hour long wait for an ER room to open up for us, normal Mr. Charm returned with a vengeance.

He played chase with Grandma.  He ran up to other kids in the room and tried to play.  He giggled, grinned, shrieked (one time scaring everyone in the waiting room), tried to run out the doors, tried to run back into the triage area, RAN RAN RAN like a maniac, and, basically, was acting normal for him.

Yes, that’s normal for him.  Feel sorry for me yet?

So we decided that he was acting the way he was in the triage area because he had just woken up from a very short nap in the car, and sometimes just isn’t that happy to have been woken up.  Because his behavior?  Was the opposite of tired, unresponsive, and low heart rate.

He was fine.  He hadn’t taken any pills after all.

Except, we were already admitted to the hospital.  There may be some procedure by which you can convince them you don’t want to stay and can leave, but we don’t know it and figured it would be just as easy to go through with seeing the doctor.  So, we waited.

When we got back to the room, finally, the nurse came in and asked a few questions, watching Mr. Charm explore the room with his usual vigor.  She laughed and left, sending the doctor in after her.

Just as Daddy lost all patience, laid Mr. Charm on the bed and told him to STOP TOUCHING BUTTONS!

He also watched for a few minutes, asking questions, and finally admitted that he has two boys, aged 2 and 3, and they’re very active….but that they aren’t as ‘curious’ as Mr. Charm seems to be!  So he did a quick physical exam and proclaimed that we were probably right, that he hadn’t taken any pills, and sent us on our way.

So excited that he can reach the sink for some Water Play!

The original plan for the day was to get the haircut in our nearby small town, come back home for lunch, then drive into the Big Town  for some errand running and be home about 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. at the latest.

It was now almost 3:00 p.m., we hadn’t eaten lunch, and the only chance we had to regain some of our day was to eat at the hospital and go run our errands as quickly as possible.  With gas costing as much as it does these days, I hate to waste a trip into town.

So we went to the cafeteria, where I heated up some leftover soup, mashed potatos, and hamburger patty for Mr. Charm and me to eat, the Geek and Mom got sandwiches, and Mr. Happy got a bottle.

Then off to errand running land we went.  Mr. Charm ate almost a whole cantaloupe worth of dehydrated cantaloupe while we were in Home Depot, so I made a mental note to buy more cantaloupe to dry!

We did try to squeeze in a haircut, but the place was already booked up for the day.  I looked at Mom and the Geek (the two biggest nags about getting his hair cut) and told them – with a straight face – “See?  God doesn’t want us to cut Mr. Charm’s hair!”

They didn’t believe me.

Humpf.

We got back home just in time for us to cook dinner, which we ate late, and then start the bedtime routine for the kids.  So, we accomplished nothing today, really, except to become even more familiar with our local emergency room!

Oh, and to decide that ALL pills must be kept in a locked container at all times.  This is ridiculous!

Do any of you have toddler who seem to be magnets for disaster?  How do you deal?  Please tell me they grow out of this at some point!

Toddler For Sale: He’s Worth 27 Cents!

 
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In an amusing story, last Friday Mr. Charm swallowed some coins.  How many?  Who knows!  He’d discovered the Geek’s special coin hiding place and had been hoarding coins in hard to reach places.  So other than knowing that one of the coins was silver, I have no idea how many or in what denomination they were.

The doctor said the standard in these cases: watch for coins in diapers, watch for fevers, redness, decreased appetite, and if he hadn’t passed the coins by Wednesday, give them a call.

Well, on Wednesday, we hadn’t seen any coins in diapers (though he otherwise seemed fine) so I called, and they told us to come in on Thursday for an X-ray.

He screamed like a boy being tortured the whole time he was being X-rayed, which is odd, considering it was a room with a big machine that had lights and BUT-TONS! (which are his favorite things in the whole wide world right now).  Still, we got a good picture off of him and – good news!  His system is clear!

Somehow we managed to not find the coins that he passed at some point this week.

Whew!

Before the X-ray, my Dad jokingly said he would buy Mr. Charm for a quarter – after all, he was worth at least 27 cents!

Nah. He’s worth much more than that.

Got Beef?

 
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One advantage to having in-laws that raise cattle is the ability to call them up and say “We’d like a cow; grass-fed – not finished on grain…do you have one?”

They did.  He wasn’t as large as they usually would wait to butcher, but he was big enough. So, we bought him, and finally got the meat back!

Want to see what 322 pounds of beef looks like?  Yeah, I was curious, too.

Note the bags of breast milk stacked neatly on the second shelf of the first picture.  Over 200 ounces of milk that I can’t feed my son.  Just.  Sickening.

So, hopefully this will hold us for a while.  Fingers crossed that Mr. Happy doesn’t react to beef!

Where’s A Vampire When You Need One?

 
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After last weeks blood draw debacle, I called the allergist to see if she had someplace else she would recommend we go for the blood draw.  She advised me to go to our pediatrician, who sent me to the hospital where Mr. Charm was born to have it done.

We got there and the lab tech was the same one who had drawn my blood for the gestational diabetes test I took when I was expecting Mr. Charm.  I know she’s good at blood draws for adults – I remember complimenting her on her skills two years ago.

Still, I made sure to mention that I needed someone who was good at pediatric blood draws.  She answered that she was very comfortable with them, as she does them all the time for patients in the hospital, and also our pediatricians patients that are sent over.

I relaxed.

She was incredibly gentle about her attempts, but still, she did NOT succeed.  Mr. Happy was NOT happy about it, and cried a lot, but it wasn’t the hysterical crying he did last week.  I really felt like he mainly didn’t like being restrained.

On her second attempt, his blood actually clotted in the needle before she could get any blood!  Honestly, she wasn’t in the vein for very long at all – is he just a really fast clotter?

After that attempt, she called upstairs to the NICU to ask for someone to come help.

They sent down the nurse practitioner, who happened to be one of the people that took care of Mr. Charm when he was a NICU patient two years ago.  So I know HE is also very good, and very gentle.

After listening to our tale of blood draw woe, he decided that Mr. Happy’s little elbows and hands were too bruised up to attempt blood draws there, and planned to do an arterial draw from his wrists.

He did everything he could to ensure success.  He turned down the overhead lights and used the red light under Mr. Happy’s arm to clearly see the arteries and veins.  He made sure Mr. Happy was tightly swaddled to limit any wiggling.  He waited until Mr. Happy was calm and smiling before starting.  He used a hot pad to encourage vascular dilation.

Still, it didn’t work.

He went ahead and tried the other hand, and actually got the blood to start flowing.

Then it stopped.

I swear I was right there and he didn’t move the needle a bit when the blood started flowing – it just stopped for no reason!

By this point, Mr. Happy was crying hysterically and I said “OK, that’s it.  We’re done.”  I was pretty much in tears, too.  Mr. Happy cried himself into exhaustion.  He slept for almost three hours after we left the hospital!

The lab tech and nurse practitioner were almost as upset as I was.  They said to wait until next week to give Mr. Happy time to heal up completely, then come back to try again.  This time, they were leaving a note in his file to call the Head Doctor to come take the blood.  Dr. W was the one who led the care for Mr. Charm in the NICU, and again, I know he’s good.

But now I’m wondering…is he good enough?

No one seems able to get my sons blood!  I know they had great success with IV’s in the hospital, and they also took blood from him several times as well.  What is so different now?

I just don’t know.  And I’m not sure I want to subject him to it again in any event.

After I called the allergist to report yet another failed attempt, she advised me to hold off on the lab work for now.  After all, she says, it won’t change anything about how we’re treating him.  It’s just more diagnostic/ruling out work right now, which can wait.

Sigh…I hope this isn’t how lab work is always going to be.

Snack Attack – Carrot Chips

 
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At my wit’s end one day, looking for a new snack Mr. Charm wouldn’t turn up his nose at, I decided to shred some carrots and fry them up.

Thanks to my new fryer, this proved to be an easy task.

I took a peeler and peeled long strips of carrot until there just wasn’t any carrot left to peel.

Carrots, peeled and waiting for the fryer.

While I was doing that, I heated up the fryer oil to 300 degrees.

When it was ready, I dumped a couple of handfuls of carrots into the basket and set the timer to 3 minutes and 30 seconds.  They’re ready to eat at 3 minutes, but I like them a little crispier.  It’s up to you!

Finished frying, draining into the pan.

When they’re done, I take them out, drain them, and treat them just as I do french fries.

Laid out on paper towels, seasoned with a little sea salt, ready to nosh on!

They were a HUGE success!  Mr. Charm just can’t get enough of them.  It’s a struggle to keep his hands away from them before they’ve cooled.  Chalk another one up for Mama!

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CARROT CHIPS

-2 carrots per person (minimum)
-oil for frying
-sea salt
-garlic powder (optional)

1. Wash and peel your carrots.  Cut off the ends.
2. Using your peeler, peel off long strips of the carrots until you can’t peel any more.  Heat your oil to 300 degrees while you do this.
3. Drop a few handfuls of carrot peels into the oil; let fry for 3 to 3 and 1/2 minutes.
4. Drain off as much oil as you can, then lay out on paper towels.
5. Lightly season with sea salt and garlic powder – or any seasonings you think would be good!
6. Enjoy eating a snack that is (relatively) healthy and absolutely delicious!

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What seasonings would you use to liven up your Carrot Chips?  Do you have any (relatively) healthy snacks that your kids just love?  Do share!

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This post has been shared with: Real Food Wednesdays.

Snack Attack – French Fries

 
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One thing an elimination diet does is make it hard to have snacks.  Grabbing a bag of chips is out, as is anything processed!

So I’m trying to come up with easy to make, delicious to eat snack foods.

One snack (that often pulls double duty as a side dish) is French Fries.  That’s easy enough, right?  Believe it or not, though, there’s a trick to making them delicious.

I never would have believed it, myself, until the day we lost power in my all-electric kitchen smack-dab in the middle of cooking lunch.  That day, I learned the secret: you have to fry your french fries TWICE to make them melt-in-your-mouth-yummy.

So, that’s what I do, now.  It makes it a little bit more involved, but it is SO  worth it!

Plus, you can fry the Fries the first time, then lay them on a cookie sheet and flash freeze them.  Then, the next time you want fries all you have to do is grab some from the freezer and fry them up.

It’s homemade convenience food!

In fact, I’ve been making so many French Fries lately I decided to invest in a home fryer.  I bought the Presto Digital ProFry, and I love it!  It has made lunchtime and snack time so much easier!  If you want to make fried goods at home, I strongly recommend you get yourself a fryer.  It’s worth every penny.

So here’s how I do it:

Grab a bunch of potatos, wash them, and slice them into strips.

Get your fryer hot (or the oil in your pan hot), drop in a few handfuls of fry strips.

Let them fry for about five or six minutes.  Take them out of the oil, and drain them.  In the fryer, I can rest the basket out of the oil and let it drip into the vat below.  Before the fryer, when I used a pan with oil, I drained as much as I could as I picked them up and then laid them on several layers of paper towels.

Lay them out fairly flat to let them cool a bit.  They don’t need to be cold, or even completely room temperature.  Just try to let the majority of the heat out before frying them again.  This is why it’s so great to do this ahead of time – you could, feasibly, do a big batch of these while making breakfast on a weekend, then just toss them in the fridge.  Any time a munchkin wants a snack, it would only be 5 minutes away at that point!

After they’ve cooled, toss them back in the fryer.  Let them cook for about three to five more minutes at this point.  It all depends on how crispy/brown you want them.

Drain them again, lay them out on paper towels, and they’re good to go!  To punch it up a bit, we dust them lightly with sea salt and garlic powder.  Yum-my!

One idea I may experiment with in the future, to make these even healthier and less oily, is to boil or bake the Fries the first time, and only fry them the second time for that nice crispiness.  If any of you have tried that, let us know how it turns out!

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FRENCH FRIES

-1 or 2 potatos per person, depending on size (of potato!)
-safe oil for frying
-sea salt
-garlic powder (optional)

1. Wash your potatos.  Cut them into strips.  Heat the oil in your fryer to 350 degrees.
2. Drop handfuls of potato strips into the oil.  Cook for 5 minutes or so.
3. Drain potatos, laying them out on paper towels to cool.  (At this point, you could refrigerate them for use later in the day or freeze them for use later in the week.)
4. Once most of the heat has dissipated, drop them back into the oil.  Cook for another 5 or so minutes, until they look as brown as you like them.
5. Drain, lay out on paper towels, and lightly season with sea salt and garlic powder (or whatever seasonings you like on your fries!)
6. Enjoy homemade french fries that taste better than anything at a drive-thru!

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What seasonings do you like on your french fries?  Share in the comments section!

 

Torture by Blood Draw

 
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Mr. Happy needs some blood drawn for a few tests the allergist wants run, so I took him to the local (won’t say the name) to have it done.

She absolutely tortured my baby!

She told me to sit holding him in my lap.  Then she tried the right arm, wiggled the needle around, moved it back and forth a bunch of times, and finally gave up.

I recommended we lay him on the table so we could hold him very still, so we did.  Then she tried the left arm, did the same thing only MORE, and the whole time he was screaming his head off!

His little arms are bruised.  It’s horrible to look at.

She quit just as I was about to tell her to stop.  She was positively terrified of the idea of taking his blood from the minute we walked into the office – I should have just left without trying, simply based on her nervousness.

So, the whole experience has to be repeated!  I’ll have to drive another 30 minutes in to town to have someone else try to draw his blood.  Poor little bug; next time, I won’t subject him to someone scared to even try.

I really hope we get a phlebotomist that is good at pediatric blood draws next time.

Has anyone else gotten to witness blood draw torture before?  What are your limits/rules for blood draws?

Comfort From the LLL

 
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I nursed Mr. Happy three times.  Then he started reacting.  So I stopped.

Bummer for both of us.

However, I knew my system wasn’t completely cleaned out, so it’s not really a surprise.  I had just hoped that it was cleaned out enough that he would react only as badly as he was to the Ele-care.  Sadly, he reacted worse.

The good news is that I know he hasn’t forgotten how to nurse!  The bad news is that I’m back to spending four hours a day pumping, in addition to 3-4 hours a day bottle feeding.  Sigh.

In my extremely stressed out state, I finally called the local La Leche League office and spoke to one of their lactation consultants.

She reminded me to drink plenty of water and pump regularly.  She encouraged me to pump even more often than I already am, which is going to be hard.  Setting a timer helps, but if the timer goes off and you’re up to your elbows in poopy diapers right in the middle of the ‘put the toddler down for a nap’ window, well, your pumping is just going to have to wait.

At this point, if I can just get a good 5 pumps in per day, I’m doing really good.

She also reminded me that stress really affects milk supply.  I looked at the calendar and saw a drastic decrease in my ounces per day starting on the exact date that we received the FPIES diagnosis.

Coincidence?  I think not!

So, she recommended that I try to keep Mr. Happy nearby when I’m pumping, and focus really hard on his little baby face, his adorable little smile, the way his eyes light up when he focuses on my face, his cute little pudgy legs, well, you get the idea.  I’m supposed to “think baby thoughts” while I’m pumping to help relax my body and stimulate let-down.

It’s great advice.  I doubt I’ll be able to really take it, though.  Mr. Charm thinks that when I’m pumping, and therefore tied to one spot and unable to get to him, is the ideal time to unleash the Tasmanian Devil within him and give 100% of his efforts to destroying my house.  So I spend most of my pumping time shouting “NO!” in his direction, which really accomplishes nothing except stressing me out further.

Hmm…if it doesn’t make a difference, maybe I should try what she said!  At least then I’d accomplish something worthwhile in that 25 minutes!

On the plus side, at least it seems my supply isn’t dwindling any more.  It’s holding steady, so that’s a comfort.

Plus, Mr. Happy seems to be doing better on the Ele-care, now.  The lovely ladies on the BabyCenter FPIES message board said that sometimes there is an adjustment period when a baby starts an elemental formula where it seems as though they’re having FPIES reactions, but really are just transitioning.  The only way to tell is to just push through.

We had no choice but to push through, and the last two days he’s been Happy Baby again – smiling, giggling, and acting as though he feels a lot better.

I’m SO relieved!

I do want to try to nurse again, in a few weeks when I know my system is clean.  I hope very much that he can take breastmilk and not react.

Whether he does or not, though, it’s good to know there is SOMETHING I can feed my son that will help him thrive.  Even if I resume regular nursing again, it’s nice to know that if I get sick, or when I return to work, he’ll have something he can rely on to fill his tummy.

Whew!

Next step: getting blood drawn for some more IgE and IgG tests his allergist wants done.

Have any of you experienced a transition period from breastfeeding to elemental formula?