Neck and Neck

We have 2 new safe foods! Butternut squash and Venison! In my desperation to find another veggie before the pumpkin season was over, we tried butternut. Carter loves it and has declared it pumpkin with honey. So now we have 2 safe veggies, one of which I can get year round. I have even found the butternut in the freezer section. We have received the venison from family and friends and are so fortunate to have meat for carte that is truly wild. We were also given Pheasant and Goose! Two points for Carter!!

We tried chicken broth again and his system still isn’t ready for grain fed broths. The chickens were soy and corn free, but still fed grain. Carter ended up with upper respiratory issues that are finally starting to resolve themselves. One point for FPIES!

We have almost 300 pounds of pumpkin in our garage waiting to be cut, cleaned, baked and pureed. The produce manager said that he was only able to get them until Christmas last year, so we bough them out. At Carter’s current rate of 2 pumpkins a day, we needed all we could get. I call this one a draw. We were lucky enough to find pumpkin locally, but it’s a lot of work to process that much pumpkin.

Our kitchen is still on lockdown. Carter is no longer allowed to be left alone in the kitchen, even for a minute, even if I think it’s safe. He’s gotten very good at moving very fast and very quietly to get to food. He moved the stool, chair and bar stool over to the pantry and chowed down on some yummy cheese filled crumble coffee cake. All this within 5 minutes. I took this picture after we'd cleaned him all up. He is a sneaky one!

His body hasn’t had sugar in over a month and he didn’t know what to do with it. He ended up with a “Sugar Rage”, screaming and tantruming and completely out of control. Once that subsided, the tummy pains, loose diapers and gas started. It took 5 days for that to clear. He has also discovered the garbage can and sneaks food out of it. The last one was peanut butter. It caused enough of a reaction to move peanut butter to the unsafe list, it bordered on IgE. He had respiratory symptoms within the hour that lasted through the night. The horrible, drowning cough . . . It was organic, natural peanut butter so we won’t be trying peanuts anytime soon! Two points for FPIES. Carter – 2, FPIES – 3.

When Carter is eating what he is supposed to, we’ve noticed a wonderful change; HE TALKS! He talks in full sentences with new words every day and concepts that just blow me away. We asked him the other day what he wanted from Santa. Toys? Books? Movies? No, he wants Santa to come for dinner and sit right by him and he also wants a hug and a kiss from Santa. It truly is a pleasure to hear his little voice and it makes me fight that much harder to make sure our home is safe for him. One point for Carter. Carter – 3, FPIES – 3.

And that really is where we are right now, Carter and FPIES, neck and neck in the war to keep him healthy. Some battles we win and some we lose, but we keep fighting, determined to heal our little boy!