BabyWhispererForums.com
EAT => Food Allergies => Topic started by: ~Jen~ on March 31, 2015, 20:25:30 pm
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DD2's EBF and has mucous stools and reflux. Her nappies are getting worse. More mucous and really liquidy. Paed recommended cutting major allergens from early on as DD1 went through the same thing. I've been dairy/soy/egg/gluten/nut free for the past 2 months. Despite all this, it is getting worse. More mucous and runny. She had a Calprotectin test done (was told this tests gut inflammation) and it has doubled in two weeks. She hasn't been putting on much weight which is why paed most concerned. We had a visit today thankfully she jumped up in weight a bit so he has delayed a Neocate trial to see how she does EBF for another week.
My diet mainly consists of fruits and veg, meat (mainly chicken, beef and lamb) and fish, potatoes, rice and oats. I take a few vitamins and supplements . I know there really is no way to know for sure without doing a challenge but in the interest of time is there anything you think I could be missing or that stands out as potential trouble food?
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Sorry... just realised I probably should have posted this in the Food Allergies board please move as needed!
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This might also be a sign of a gut flora imbalance. Has she ever had antibiotics? Did you have them during delivery? If she has a lot of yeast in her system, anything starchy would feed the yeast in her gut and they'd multiply.
It might be worth looking to see if you can find dairy-free probiotics and give them a try.
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Interesting! Yes, I was given antibiotics during delivery. I will start a probiotic tomorrow - thanks so much for the idea! Do you think I should cut back on the starchy foods as well?
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I am wondering about the food chemicals - Salicylates, Amines and Glutamate.... I don't know much about them I am afraid but here is a thread we had a while ago that might help?
Diary of putting my family on the RAPH diet
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Ooh, hadn't thought about sals etc; Buntybear raises another possibility.
I'd probably start with the probiotics and see if they make a difference; if so, I'd go ahead and cut back some on the starches and see if it changes anything.
And definitely check out the other thread; there is so much that can mess with the body!
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You know we suspected food chemicals with DD1 and I followed the RAPH loosely with the help of Eloise years ago. I never saw a clear improvement for DD1 but it was hard to know for sure. I just pulled out my old book and noticed that many of the foods I am left eating with DD2 are very high in Sals and Amines... hmmm. This could be the missing piece. I will swap some things around tomorrow and see if we see a change. Thanks for reminding me about this!
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I hesitated to post it as it makes life even more complicated but if you have cut so much out already and there is still so much mucous then I thought I might as well through it in the mix :P. It could just be cutting out some of the fruit and veg may help.
Olly reacted very badly to fructose when he was weaned. I don't actually know if that can go through breast milk though ???
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And I hesitated to pull out the book dreading having to cut more foods but I think I can just swap some things around to cut out the very high sals fruits/veg and eat things that are more moderate. I think it is a good start for now and not too hard. ;)
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Good luck, really hope this is the key!
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Glad you have had such great advice so far Jen. Im going to move this over to the FA board for now x
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Take a look into FPIES and see if this sounds like something your child might have. My daughter was just diagnosed and has frequent mucous and runny poos.
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Well there has definitely been an improvement in her poos! :D
Still some mucous but much less and not so runny anymore. I know these things take time but I think we are heading in the right direction. Fingers crossed. I wanted to try focusing on one change at a time so first I've focused on the probiotics and cutting back on starchy foods.
Deb, anything else you can recommend I do to continue to rebalance gut flora? Probiotics 2x a day, diet mainly meat/fish,non starchy fruit and veg.
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Oh yay! I'd stick with what you're doing for right now, especially as she's still so young. Some people like grapefruit seed extract to help kill yeast, but as she's so young you'd be the one adding it to your own drinks so she'd be getting that thru the milk, but there are different schools of thought on that stuff. If there's already improvement, I"d stay that course and see how it progresses.
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Thanks! Will keep doing what we are doing! I will be sooo happy if we figured it out and I can keep BFing her. :)
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Nappies getting worse again. >:(
Looking back at what I've been eating the food chemicals are high. While cutting out starches, I'm eating things like avocado and rasberries regularly which I believe are listed as very high. Given it is about 5 days cutting starches, I think time to focus on the food chemicals and see if it makes a differenc. Was really hoping it was as easy as a probiotic and starchy foods. But the nappy this morning was so runny and mucousy that there is most definitely something still irritating her.
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Is she unwell though Jen??
Don't forget that bit otherwise it's a hard chase yk?!!
We have a lot of mucous here now, but clearly his milk is the same, and our overall trend is slowly upwards. He's much looser since starting omeprazole so maybe that is the reason??
I think C is on the same?? Just a thought :-*.
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No definitely not unwell - super happy and smiley all day long (except when I try and get her to take a nap ::))
The only problem is the weight gain. I probably wouldn't be too worried about the mucous given she is well and we had the same with Caitlyn and despite all my efforts to figure it out, I think it just cleared up with time. But Caitlyn was gaining weight and that is the issue with Caia. The Paed did this test of her stool which is telling us the degree of inflammation in her gut and apparently the latest results were "really bad". The first test was bad and then tested 3 weeks later and the number doubled so that sent him into a flurry of concern. He believes the inflammation is causing her not to absord food and so not gaining weight. He also said there is a small chance there could be an internal problem but we won't know for sure unless he looks inside which would be last resort.
She is on Omeprazole... interesting about T's mucous increasing on it. Everything is a bit foggy but if I remember correctly her nappies started getting much more mucous around the time we started it. I wonder if worth taking her off of it for a few days to see?? That definitely scares me though!
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Hugs hun, the inflammation test was probably calpractin or something like that. If going up exponentially then something is troubling the gut for sure.
How long has she been on the losec for? I'm sure my T got more mucusy before it went altogether :-\ that said we had to put him on neocate as dietary changes just wasn't enough, my milk just seemed to make him sick period.
I'm assuming before they do anything invasive they would trial neocate first...or not... :-\
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Yes exactly. It was a calprotectin test and it was something like 160 and then jumped up to 350. So not great. Paed does want to do Neocate trial to see if it is my milk. If she improves, we know it is me /my diet. She doesn't take a bottle though even with EBM. So trying to get her to take Neocate by bottle is going to be tough. If she does start putting on weight Paed is willing to put off the trial and keep watching her.
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On Losec for about 7 weeks now.
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Are the probiotics dairy-free?
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Yes that is what I was told but will double check.
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If they want a neocate trial are they prepared to admit her and sort the bottle issue for you?? Sometimes they will.
I have done 2 'hardcore/ cold turkey' breast to bottles :-[ :-[. I did it with DS1 at 5 months due to the exact same thing you are doing now - severe reflux and poor weight gain - and with DD at 8 months due to me needing to stop feeding on my medical grounds. Neither was necessarily my most shining parent moment - but I have done it if you end up needing support through it :'( :(.
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Ugh, so gutted.... she hadn't poo'd in almost 2 days and I was so hopeful it would be a good one with all the diet changes. And it was just filled with bright yellow runny liquid. >:( Feeling really unmotivated to keep going on such a strict diet without seeing improvement. I just want to keep BFing her - why does it have to be so hard!?!?
Thank you Liz. It would be great to get your advice / BTDT when teh time comes. Paed is away for another week so I have some time before the next weight check. At last visit, he did say if she won't take the bottle/cup/or syringe then he will have to admit her and put in a feeding tube. :'( I can't even think about that right now.
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Aw, so sorry. :'(
If she won't take the Neocate any other way, could you try giving some to her in a syringe, like medicine?
Both mine became whizzes at drinking straws once they got the hang of them, but your DD might still be too young for it yet. (I regretted it with DD2, who was so happy to find that she could guzzle an entire feed in 30 seconds thru a straw that she quit nursing cold-turkey one night, AFTER I'd given my friend my breast pump! That was a long drive to her house and back! LOL)
Will keep mulling this over....
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Thomas was tube fed on NICU for a week. He was on CPAP for a week with breathing issues after birth. So something else I have BTDT ::) ::).
I understand wanting to keep BFing. I felt that so strongly with both of mine, but once I stopped and the hormones settled I felt SO much more settled about it. It's a pure, basic, human nature driven thing. And I have also had the guilt over not feeding my third (I can't feed anymore due to breast cancer surgery - you might know that so sorry if repeating myself ::) ::)). It's all pretty rubbish >:( >:(, but Thomas does love his stinky milk ;), and Megan did love that bottle that she only took at 8 months ;D. She was 2.5 before she gave up that bedtime bottle ::) :P. Jacob never loved it, but he fought it less than he fought me.
How much does she weigh?? Poor thing does need to gain doesn't she :-\ :-\?
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Oh hun its so hard, reading your post takes me back to T. Not that he was as poorly but the feeding struggles and pain is just the pits.
I understand wanting to keep BFing. I felt that so strongly with both of mine, but once I stopped and the hormones settled I felt SO much more settled about it. It's a pure, basic, human nature driven thing.
I do too, I luckily BF Z for 18 months but T was cold turkey to Neocate at about 10 weeks. Thing is through all the guilt and feeling the 'need' (innate not even conscious) to BF after 3 days on that 'stinky' (love that name Liz) milk he was a different baby. Knowing the pain was eased was worth not BF yk.
also here to hold your hand through it hun.
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The thing is it would almost make this much easier if I could see her struggling/pain and then it would be worth it to make her feel better. I could do that. Her reflux seems to be under control now with the Losec so that pain is dealt with. With DD1, I could see she was in pain and I was really happy to do Neocate trial to see if it helped. For her in teh end, it didn't really make a difference so I was able to keep feeding her and eventually the mucous cleared. But Caia doesn't show any signs at all - she loves BFing and is such a happy baby and loves to eat. It is just this weight issue that is causing the problems. She poos as she eats and it is almost like it goes in and comes right back out in her nappy - gut not absorbing?
Her weight isn't even that low.. I think a week ago it was 5.7kg (this was a nice big jump up which gave me hope) and gave us another 2 weeks to try and get the weight up some more. It is the dropping centiles that has paed worried. She started out just above the 75th centile and now is down around 25th.
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Oh hun so many hugs. Its really tough when we can't work out whats going on. Wish they could tell us. There are many things it 'could' be ... a range of intolerance's from lactose to something like FPIES but try not to worry too much right now sweetie if she is ok in herself atm. Your pead sounds onto it and proactive and will no doubt get to the bottom of it.
When is your next visit?
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We haven't had a poo in 3 days! I think that is good sign? I've been doing the RAPH diet and focusing on cutting back the food chemicals. It seems to be working! I noticed that all the foods that I suspected were irritating her are either high or very high in sals. I've removed those foods and subsituted with other foods that are low/moderate and the runny poos just stopped. I don't want to get too excited yet but could this be it!?! :D
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Oh - PLEASE! I hope so much it is!
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I hope so. Fingers and toes crossed :-*
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Our next appt is tomorrow. I am not looking forward to it. This has been an emotional rollercoaster. After my last post we had nearly a week of normal poos. I was so excited as it confirmed it must be my diet. It seemed the low sals/RAPH diet was the key. I kept going and was really strict with the diet and then about a week ago, the mucous poos came back. Just crushing. At first it was just one off and then a few more each day until we are basically back to an explosive poo after every feed. It is killing me because I feel like I had it - and now we are back to where we started. Ugh. I was too busy to keep a food diary so of course I can't remember what I was doing during that good week.
I'm going back to the gut flora theory and maybe the effect of those changes were just delayed. I'm finding it hard to be cutting out starches/sugars though while breastfeeding. I assume all grains need to be cut as well?
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When we did the Body Ecology Diet (candida-killer! LOL), the only grains allowed on it were millet, quinoa, amaranth, and buckwheat - and of those, only millet is an actual grain (the rest are "pseudo-grains").
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Just thought I would update you with the latest... she got weighed in last week and gained just enough to keep the doctor happy for now. She is still on the 25th centile. He is letting us go another month with BFing :D
In the meantime, I'm still figuring out my diet. I noticed whenever I ate a big serving of Pears her nappies were terrible. They are low chemical so I knew I'm missing something. I remembered someone mentioned Fructose and I started reading. Many foods she seemed to be upset by were on that list. Also lots of gas and some frothy like poos. I've switched now to cutting high fructose foods and the mucous nappies have almost completely stopped. Again, not getting too excited... it has only been 2 days.
If anyone knows anything about fructose malabsorbtion please let me know!
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My kids were older when we discovered that they don't do well with fructose, so not a fount of info any more, but I have found over the years that if I say my kids don't do well with fructose, more and more people nod instead of rolling their eyes. :)
We discovered it when they had two juice boxes one afternoon and older in particular got weepy and combative and had "allergy shiners" under her eyes - from juice boxes!
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Sounds good Jen. Even if she has mucous she is still gaining :).
We are getting more and more mucous, and he often foams at the end. Lots of it :-X :-X. Got to be the milk here, but doubt they will do anything else.
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Olly had a problem with Fructose. Even when he was allergy tested at 1 and we knew it wasn't anything allergy related he would scream for 2 hours every single night until he passed wind. At 18 months we discovered it was FM and it stopped virtually overnight! You can google lists of high fructose foods and you basically avoid them.
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Tom was terrible and on cutting fructose we saw a huge improvement! Pear was the worst and I was feeding him it a lot because I thought it was a 'safe' food. :'(
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Just popping on... so many hugs momma.. it can be so challenging to figure these wee creatures out! My refluxers are on Losec as well... here in Canada, they do contain lactose... could that be something as well?
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Thanks for all the support :-*
I feel deflated today and almost ready to give up. :'( Tired of constantly tweaking my diet and still having these horrible poos. First thing this morning she was super hungry and within minutes the poo was running out of her nappy all over her and me. She was also up every hour from 3am so I am guessing tummy was unsettled. Ugh. Last night I ate a huge bowl of brown rice, swede, lamb burger and half a baked potato. I guess could possibly be rice? Could it just be my BM makes her sick? Not sure where to go from here. DH said just eat a normal diet and stop worrying. :-\
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Pah - when DH is nursing, then he gets to say that. :P (As I told my DH when I was having BF trouble, "You men have your adequacy issues - this is mine." He had no response to that! :D)
It may well have been the rice. Remember, there may be more than one thing at play here. The rice would still have broken down to sugars, and even if fructose is a primary culprit, if yeast is present also, fructose would still feed the little guys.
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Do you think that your dinner could have got into her so quickly that she was awake from 3am? What did you eat earlier on in the day? x
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I am starting to think there are multiple issues going on... i just can't find a baseline and thT is making it feel impossible. She was having some vomiting today, not a huge amount but enough for me to know something was really bothering her. I've never seen her have that before and she was very very fussy. I had rice cereal for breakfast before I realised about the rice from last night. ::)
Such a good point about the timing of when foods end up in the BM. I've thought about and it would make it easier to pinpoint something if I could have a sense for when to look at my meals. I did have a late dinner last nifht around 9pm and then I fed her at 11pm and again at the 3am wake.
Earlier yesterday for breakfast, I had puffed rice cereal oat milk, banana, some and for lunch a chicken/carrot/potato casserole and a small spinach salad. Rice cakes for snack. It was a LOT of rice yesterdAy!
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Hi Love,
Claire contacted me and asked if I could possibly offer anything to help you, having had 2 kids in a similar situation... well done you are being such a great advocate for your LO and sounds like your LO is improving!
Firstly I would say that mucus poos aren't all bad, they really need to be considered in the greater symptom picture because babies with reflux and food intolerances guts aren't in the greatest shape they will continue to produce these sorts of poos. If baby is not in pain, then don't worry too much :) :) unless you saw blood in the stool... or had the stool tested for blood. If you find that LO is very bothered and unsettled at times, then looking back at foods you ate, I would just look at the last 24 hours each time, but also, these babies of reflux just do have periods of unsettledness anyway, especially if teething or sick, their capacity to cope goes right down especially if immune system is working hard, and they will get unsettled.
My youngest had severe reflux and was on Losec, multiple food intolerances and food chemical sensitivities. The good news is that he is 5 and eats anything! Every month he just got better and better..... age 1 and 2 were milestones. Off meds at 22 months was a huge improvement! We did alot of work on his gut and immune system though we were very careful with re-introducing foods. we also looked at mineral imbalances and he was on specific supps for a few years including a range of probiotics. We complemented our paediatricians care with holistic care also, I found a nutritionist and naturopath to help us give a diet of healing foods and supps. From a nutritionist point of view his diagnosis was gut dysbiosis, and mineral deficiencies, from the paed point of view from paed the diagnoses was food intolerances and reflux. Both were helpful is that each works from a different angle to restore health.
In general, my view as a student of holistic nutrition and naturopathy reflux, food intolerances, mucus poos and unsettledness, digestive discomfort, lower abdominal pain, bloating, excess gas, is a sign of gut flora imbalance or gut dysbiosis. There are simple tests you can do to help confirm this (from a practitioner) however, mostly these tests aren't necessary.
Whilst completely necessary to control reflux pain, Losec unfortunately doesn't help with gut dysbiosis at all. My son was on Losec till 22 months though! Unfortunately Losec encourages further gut imbalances mainly because a lack of stomach acid as the first line of defence for "bad" bacteria means that more get in and colonise the gut. Good levels of stomach acid trigger the release of digestive enzymes in the duodenum when the acid is neutralised there by bile. If the stomach acid is not present then this lessens the efficiency of digestion. Bad bacteria feed on sugars and ferment and cause excess gas and boating and do not aid in efficient breakdown of carbohydrates. Bad bacteria compete with good bacteria for real estate. Antibiotics kill off both bad and good bacteria and leave vacant real estate for candida and bad bacteria to regrow. Good bacteria aid greatly in the breakdown of carbohydrates and sugars, without good populations of these food passes through the small intestine improperly broken down and then can ferment in the bowel contributing to gas and bloating and pressure in the gut, which is not good for oesophageal sphincter tone, if the gut is under stress, tone of all sphincters will be lessen.
Also, good bacteria live in the lining of your small and large intestine and also play an important role in immune function. Sometimes the kids with gut dysbiosis will struggle to recover from colds and flus and run from one virus infection to another without truly recovering. Having said all that, one can cope with gut dysbiosis, the body is am amazing machine and still digests food and finds ways to compensate, its just not ideal.
Generations of antibiotics erode the ecosystem of the gut and a mother passes her flora onto her children, and so forth. We are looking at third generation of antibiotics without much time spent on replenishing the gut and we are only at the beginnings of understand how important health gut flora truly is for long term health.
Also contributing to food intolerances and especially salicylate sensitivity, is the development of the liver of a child. It reaches its best capacity for producing digestive enzymes around age 5, so over time their capacity to tolerate and digest foods really increases, as when off the meds, I noticed a much quicker improvement in all area of tolerating foods and digesting. Children with a celtic genetic background, reish hair and very very pale skin & rashy cheeks seem to be the main group affected by this lack of enzymes issue and with time their capacity to detoxify these chemicals improves as they grow bigger.
It sounds like your LO is going ok with weight though :) Not losing weight, and the reflux pain is controlled which is fabulous! ;D
It is such a great thing that you have removed so many irritants from your LO's diet, and giving LO the best chance to rest up and heal. One thing is that it guts are amazing at recovering given the right conditions, so don't despair! Probiotics are a great idea! I am a believer in tailoring the right probiotics to the right gut.... you can have better results of your restore certain strains that are lacking... this can only be looked at by testing your gut flora though and its expensive and still considered experimental by some. There are also some strains of bacteria such as the good e/coli that can displace bad bacteria so if you know what you have overgrowths of you can target these more specifically. For instance we took a supplement called mutaflor (e.col) when LO had a Colostridium over growth, and 4 weeks after taking mutaflor 10 days on 5 days off and 10 days on he was clear! But there is a great deal of evidence emerging around the world to support this approach to health and many mainstream are getting into it too. Holistic nutritionists will do this sort of testing. In Australia, naturopaths do it and so do wholistic paediatricians, and Gp's that are trained in environmental medicine. Where are you based - city and country?
the other important thing to is to feed LO some prebiotic foods, the foods that the good bacteria feed on. I am sure you are already doing this just from having a great diet. They like fermentable fibre. the super foods for fibre are, that contain the 3 types of fibre for good bacteria are rye, legumes (should be soaked overnight to remove enzyme inhibitors and phytates) and barley. Also, white rice is quite good as a prebiotic food, especially basmati! Its important though to not go overboard with the prebioitic super foods, if the gut is quite "goopy" these can cause excessive bloating and gas at first! There are also supplements like fructo-oligosaccardies (FOS), raw potato starch, that are food for good bacteria but I would only take under supervision of a nutritionist as they can cause alot of bloating. We started with a pin head amount.
When baby is older you can start to look at incorporating fermented foods in their diet, unfortunately they are high in amines though so wait till baby is more robust.
Something that sticks out, oats are not gluten free unless you specifically buy gluten free oats that are marked as so on the packet.
And good luck sounds like you are doing an astounding job! :)
My LO was born 75th percentile and dropped to 25th too. He regained as he approached age 1 and 2 to 50th and has stayed there... he is now 5. I did manage to breastfeed on a very restricted diet like yours for a year and honestly I don't know how I did it. I think that its such in individual choice but do what feels right for you.
Eating good fats is hard on a low chemical diet, consider adding in avocado back in quite early and also olive oil and grass fed animal fats. I also am an advocate for animal fats... bone broth is also amazing for your breastmilk and for bubs when they start solids, but again contains natural amines and glutamates. There is a point though were you need to step away from a low chemical diet slowly so you can add in some healing foods and more good fats.. saturated fats that are not trans fats are great, things like lard, grass fed animal fat, grass fed butter, grass fed ghee. I would certainly not be cutting the fat off your meats at the moment. Eat them all up :P
Regards
Eloys
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Hi Eloys! It is great to hear from you - thank you so much for popping over and sharing so much fantastic advice and knowledge. It is so appreciated. You helped me with my DD1 four years ago with her food intols and I don't think I ever got to thank you back then for all your support.
I think you are spot on with the gut flora imbalance and gut dysbiosis. It took me a little while of trying different things in my diet and cutting other things out but I think I'm finally on the right track thanks to all the wonderful ladies helping me on this thread. It has been about 4-5 days that I've gone completely grain free. I'm definitely seeing a gradual improvement both in fewer dirty nappies and volume of mucous. Before tryijng this, I was cutting out gluten but as a result was replacing it (and probably overcompensating!!) with gluten free grains - rice/GF oats/buckwheat... actually looking back at it I was way too heavy grains. I think that just completely stressed her already inflammed gut even further.
I'm based in London and today I went to see a Naturopath/Nutritionist for some advice on supplements and diet. She was really helpful to get ideas on how to get enough fat and protein into my diet while cutting the grains. I'm going to start on a probiotic straight away and also do a few tests to figure what I'm deficient in and hopefully supplement thosee areas.
Fingers and toes crossed at this point but I finally have a really good feeling that we are headed down the right path. Thanks again for all your great advice. I hope other BWs will read and benefit from this knowledge as well! Maybe we can take your reply and make it a sticky / FAQ ?
Take care!
Jen :-*
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Hi Jen,
I do remember you now! ;D Wow, times flies!
Removing grains can be really helpful in the early stages for settling inflammation... great. hope that really helps! Glad you have good nutritionist on board :-) Getting the right foods and nutrients into you can be tricky with such a restricted diet. If grains are causing problems then the pre-biotic fermentable fibre supplements will probably have to wait till a bit later on the path of healing they can irritate if grains are causing issues.
Yes, a sticky of FAQ could be useful :)
Let us know how you get on...
oh and Liz!! I'm so pleased had a third you are AMAZING.... a miracle... you LEGEND !! ;D ;D :-*
Regards
Eloys
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Hi all, I'm back for some more support. I am feeling so down with this today and I could really use some words of encouragement OR maybe just someone to tell me that I should just stop obsessing over it. Would love to have your thoughts - I feel like I am losing my mind!
So this is where we are at... I'm still EBF and I'm still on a completely restricted diet. I've also been grain free now for about a month. It has made a big difference for DD- we went down to 1-2 mucous poos per day rather than explosive poos after every feed. So that is good. Her weight is stable now - she hasn't gone back up to her orginial centile but she hasn't fallen from 25% for a few months now. That is good too. She has come off the Omprazole because she hasn't been showing any more signs of reflux. Another good thing. Now it seems to be just the gut issues. When she does poo it is totally runny/slime/mucous/smelly. With her nappies looking like this, I can only imagine her gut inflammation has not gotten much better and possibly worse. This is what upsets me - I feel like I am still poisoning her with BM. She has been spitting up alot now too but doesn't seem very fussed by it and seems happy enough. This whole elimination diet thing is such a needle in a haystack. I'm pretty certain she has multiple issues going on which seems to make it impossible to figure out what is irritating her.
DS is following RAPH diet for food chem intolerances. This has helped him HUGE. His aggression/anger has calmed, he is more focused at school and the volume of soiling incidents have dropped significantly. I also think I am sensitive too and now that I've changed my diet to low chemical I can really see that. Also, I'm sure I have gut flora inbalance myself (since changing diet my hypothyroidism has completely cleared up!) and I'm certain I passed this along to Caia when she was born. So gut healing needs to be a focus.
I also suspect there is a fructose intolerance issue because she seems to react strongly to pear and apple. Trying to come up with a diet that is low chemical/low FODMAPs/gut friendly (i.e. no grains)/eliminating all major allergens - is next to impossible. :-\ I have about 10 foods left to eat which just feels not at all sustainable. She is also approaching 6 months and solid intros to start dealing with......ah.
Maybe the mucous poos shoudl jsut be ignored because she seems happy enough? I've started to slip in my diet because I just can't keep eating so little. Tonight i ate half a dark chocolate bar out of frustration!! DH said just go for it because her poos are awful anyway that it won't make a difference so I caved in. >:(
Not sure what I'm really asking here other than just a hug and maybe someone to say either keep going or give up already!
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Hi Jen,
So sorry i haven't checked in lately!
Sounds like bubs is doing great!!! to be off omeprazole is monumental, to have improvement with grain free is monumental! Of course the healing prcoess is slow and stedy, it takes time for the gut to heal and inflammation to go down.
Your milk has so much amazing stuff that her gut flora desperately needs, please don;t see it as poison, all the immunoglobins and things etc are awesome for her. Of course if you ened to stop bf'ing that is totally up to you and we would support you either way.
It might do to get some liver support for both the kids and yourself, Salicylate intolerance is phase 1 detoxification in the liver. NAC n-acteyl cysteine, glycine,activated b6, zinc are all very useful nutrients to support this process as are digestive enzymes. If you can work with a nutritionist experienced ni supporting sals intolerance you will find that the kids can increase the amount of food chemicals they eat as their liver function becomes more supported and as they age towards 5 years old the liver enzyme production will be closer to optimal. My son was miles better by age 2, then 3. We weren't even off meds util 20 months so well done!
Don;t beat yourself up at making slip ups in diet we are so so human, you are not a machine, you are a person that needs treats too. :-)
I hope that things are looking up and so sorry we missed this xxx
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Wow - being off omeprazole is just great!! Thomas can't cope without it at all poor boy.
He is struggling with solids - in the sense that he is just puking milk all the time and so doesn't want to eat. My guess is nutramigen isn't the right formula for him :-\ :-\. I keep thinking I should just try something else anyway e.g. even a standard one.
We still get a lot of mucous as well.
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So sorry your post got missed when you needed hugs, hope things have improved now x
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Hello all, I'm so happy to be coming back and reporting good news!! Caia is doing so much better at 7 months. We kept at it and FINALLY her poos are normal (nearly all the time). I'm still EBF. We are slowly adding in foods to both of our diets and challenging new foods slowly, slowly. To get to the baseline, I had to completely cut out grains, and then go moderate chemical and low FODMAPs. It seems the sugars/FODMAPs were the biggest irritant to her. Once I went low FODMAPs that is when she really started to improve. I've also been taking some good quality probiotics at the same time.
She is doing well on her solids - she loves to eat! Her diet is still very limited but she is thriving. Mainly eating potatoes, green beans, swede, chicken. She had some trouble with lamb this week and she hated her first fish dish and carrots haven't been a hit. But... at least we have a handful of foods she really loves and we keep trying to expand. We went back to her paed who wanted to put her on Neocate months ago and he called her a little "chunk" and kept commenting on all her little baby rolls. ;D ;D
Thank you so much everyone for all the support and encouragement. :-* :-* I am so happy we got there!
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So good to hear that you persevered and have finally got to the bottom of it - well done you! xx