Bye Bye Carrot. Bye Bye Cauliflower!

It’s been 3 weeks since we started Carter’s journey of healing. We have learned a lot about his body, the way he reacts to foods and the overall state he was in before we started GAPS. Before we started, he didn’t know what it felt like to be hungry. I had no idea this was the case until he started to complain about tummy pain right around mealtime. He didn’t know that the pain he was feeling was his body telling him he was hungry. He is learning now to ask for food. He is learning to be hungry.

It took me a week to make this realization. Carter has NEVER touched food that wasn’t his. He’s NEVER gone into the fridge or freezer or pantry looking for food. He’s NEVER stolen food off of someone else’s plate . . . Until last week. I found him, freezer open, eating a frozen waffle. He stole a cookie off the counter. He opened up Tupperware sitting on the island and ate some food. He took leftover chicken nuggets off his brother’s plate and ate them.  It was an FPIES disaster! Food he has never even looked twice at, he was now desperate to eat. We had a classic vomiting reaction from all the junk he got his hands on, we were all a mess. But it helped me to realize that he needed to eat much more frequently than I realized. He now eats every 2 hours, which amounts to one pound of beef and 2 small pumpkins a day!

We also had 2 fails: Carrot and Cauliflower. Carrot was an uncertain food from many months ago. It used to pass through undigested, but I was hopeful that time had changed that. I was wrong. They were causing low level inflammation as evident from his bright orange and mucousy diapers. So we pulled carrot.

Cauliflower seemed like a safe choice. Low sugar content. And he’s never had it before. 2 big pluses. We introduced it boiled and pureed. He did not want to try it. He took one tiny taste and then refused the rest, going so far as to wipe his hands off immediately if any of the cauliflower got on his fingers. He had his first serving on Saturday. Sunday I mixed it in with his beef and got him to eat some more. Today Carter was obviously hungry and sat down at the table to eat dinner. I gave him the same thing he had for lunch: Beef mixed with cauliflower. He looked at it and screamed. He refused to eat it. It took almost 15 minutes before he finally ate, due to a large addition of salt. Half an hour later, we were greeted with a #3 or poop soup, as a good friend calls it. It happened over an hour ago and the smell is still lingering in the house, a mix of cauliflower and death.

Carter had some obvious tummy pain along with an escalation of cranky’s and clingy’s today, but he’s sleeping peacefully for now. Needless to say, we have pulled cauliflower and he will not be eating it again. Makes me wonder, was the flat out refusal to eat his dinner tonight because he knew the cauliflower was bothering his tummy?