Wheat Woes

Last night and this morning, I decided to test wheat back in to Brooks' diet by eating some noodles.  I wasn't positive he was allergic to wheat, but had eliminated it a month and half ago because it's a common allergen.  Sure enough an hour ago after nursing him, he projectile vomited EVERYWHERE.  It was scary how much he was throwing up.  By the end he had blood coming out of his nose from throwing up so much. So sad.  Good thing I was sitting on my leather couch because we both had to get in the shower.  He's happy though, and now I know for sure.  Hoping I can fatten him up with some solid food fast.  He's getting skinnier and skinnier by the day, and yes if you tell me he's skinny I might just deny it!  

I've ordered some Neocate formula to feed him at night to try and fatten him up and help him sleep at night, but that stuff isn't very high in calories because it's so broken down.  At least I can have it on hand for when we have a problem like today.

I love THIS article.  I feel like I could have written it!  Especially the part about the doctors. I took him to a GI specialist at the Richland clinic of Seattle Children's Hospital this week and the doctor made me feel like I was a fool for thinking he could be allergic to anything more than dairy and soy.  I was SO mad when I left and ended up in tears.  Having a doctor doubt you and make you feel like you don't know what's best for your child is so frustrating.  I will not be going back for the return appointment.

I will NOT be testing anything back into his diet from now on.  Mother knows best!

 

Winner!

I won the Biggest Loser competition at Kyle's work.  In 13 weeks I lost 19% of my body weight, which also happened to be 25 pounds! With everything that is going on with Brooks I have not been able to exercise, so I had to do it by watching what I eat.  I'm so glad it's finally over, but I'm so happy that we did it.  I'm sick of weighing myself 3 times a day!  I'm going to buy some new jeans with my $100 bucks.  Too bad they did 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners, so the amount wasn't very much, plus some people dropped out.  I'm so proud of Kyle because he lost 17 pounds, which was 9% of his body weight.  Maybe I'll take his $80 and add it to my $100.  I think I deserve it!  

Now I just need to get fit!  I still have 6 pounds to go before my goal weight, and hope to do that by exercising!  

Grateful

I just want to give a public shout out to my friend Mary Ann.  She is my source for EVERYTHING right now for allergies.  She has dealt with everything under the sun with her kids and allergies. She has definitely done her homework!  I can ask her about anything, and she has the answer.  I am so grateful for her right now.  No words.  

For those of you wondering why I'm still nursing, well there are a number of reasons.  Mainly because it's best for the baby, even if I have to try and figure out what's causing his problems.  The longer I nurse him, the higher is chances are of not having allergies later on.  HERE is a great link that Mary Ann sent me.

Last night Brooks' projectile vomited twice at night which he hasn't done since I've been off of dairy.  I've got to think that the rice is causing it.  

Today's goal: get Brooks' started on probiotics, figure out what to do with his double ear infections, get rid of my cold sore, and survive a preschool field trip with my 3 boys!

Another Allergy Update and Easter Pictures

I feel like my life revolves around cleaning up messes from my two older boys and figuring out Brooks' allergies, which also involves cleaning up lots of messy clothes from spitting up and diarrhea.  Brooks' seems to be regressing.  He's not gaining weight, he's still gassy, and still has bad diapers. I'm on a very strict diet, and have only "messed up" a couple of times with jelly beans on Easter and some jam that I didn't realize had corn syrup.  Well the last few days he seems to have been getting worse and worse and I'm not sure what to attribute it to. Tonight though I had some friends over and made some Mexican rice and used white rice.  I also had Rice Chex cereal with rice milk earlier today.  For lunch the last few days I've also been feeding him some organic rice cereal.  Tonight while our friends were still here, I nursed Brooks and he was spitting up so much and was fussy.  Literally he spit up until I put him to bed.  He was also arching his back, and seemed uncomfortable.  My friend was telling me she has a friend who is allergic to rice.  That's the only thing that I can think of eating that he could still be reacting to.  So far since I've been on my crazy strict diet, I haven't had one symptom free day for him.  Yes things have gotten better, but still there are problems that keep popping up.

For the past few months since we've been eating healthier, I've only had white rice a couple of times, and one of those times was tonight.  So that, in addition to all of the other rice products that I had in my system today, I' thinking that's got to be it.  Who knows though.  

Did I mention he just finished his antibiotic for a double ear infection, and I'm pretty sure he still has the infections?  Poor baby.

I started making the boys their Easter bow ties at 12:30 am on Easter.  It was a crazy day for us, and pretty much everything that could go wrong, went wrong.  However, I had in my head that I was going to make my boys Easter ties, and so I did.  I know, they look extremely amateur, but if you knew all the circumstances behind making these ties, you'd understand. I was using a sewing machine from the 1960's that I'd never used on my own before, I've never attempted my own sewing project, I had NO fabric, so I had to use some thick linen scrap fabric that I cut from some IKEA curtains, and Kyle was getting our truck towed to our house at 1 am after breaking down....I could go on!  Long story short, I finished the ties at 2 am.  I showed up for church and there were half a dozen boys in our ward with really cute homemade bow ties on so I was a little humbled :).  Good thing my boys didn't realize that theirs weren't quite up to par.  By the time church was over they had tugged on those ties so much that they looked a little rough.When we took these picture the boys were done with sitting still, they wanted to eat lunch and their Easter candy, and Brooks' was so hungry.  Note to self: NEVER take pictures after church.  I took a million pictures and these were definitely the best of the bunch! Oh boys!

What are the odds????

Our neighbor Bob calls our house all the time.  He LOVES to talk, I mean really, really loves to talk.  However, he never calls us from work, always from his home phone.  This morning my mom called me and asked me if I'd talked to Bob.  It was around 10 am and Bob was at work, so of course I hadn't.  I said, no and asked her why she was asking.  She said she she just got off the phone with Bob and he was at work and that he called for Kyle's phone number.  I was immediately confused!  Why would Bob call my parents house, but even more importantly, HOW would he call my parents house from a work phone?  He doesn't know where they live, he has no idea what their last name is (I don't even think he knew my mom's first name until I told him it was the same as his daughter's name this week), and he's most definitely never called my parents' home.

My mom said that the phone rang this morning, and she said hello.  The man on the other end said, "Chelsea?" and my mom said  "no this is Jill."  Bob said, "oh, are you babysitting the boys?"  She said "no, I'm cutting my husband's hair."  Bob was confused and so was my mom.  Somehow she found out she was talking to Bob, and he found out that he had indeed not called our home, but my parents home.  Our phone number is not closely related to my parents phone number at all.  My mom asked him what number he dialed and he repeated my parents home phone number to her.  She said "that's my phone number." Bob had the last four digits of their phone number in his head all morning he said.  She told Bob what our home number was, and sure enough Bob knew that was our home phone number and wasn't sure why he had dialed the number which was my parents.  Is this crazy to anyone else?  Bob was in shock all day.  My mom told Bob that God works in mysterious ways.

By the way, the odds are 1 in 10,000 that he would dial that number.  (they would be higher, but the first 3 numbers of our phone number are the same)