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!
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
Regards
Eloys
