Cauliflower Part 2

Ok, where did I leave off? Oh, yes. Carter was sleeping peacefully . . . until 8:30. He woke up withering in pain. I brought him downstairs and he just laid his head on my chest, drew his knees up into the fetal position and kept pushing on his tummy. There were a couple, “My tummy hurts” and then it happened. A full stomach emptying vomit session. Even at a moment like this, Carter still managed to make us both laugh. “Plu-yuck! It doesn’t taste good!” Followed by, “I feel better” with a big smile on his face.  How I love this little boy!

You may be asking how I knew it was an FPIES reaction and not the start of the flu or a stomach bug. There are two things for Carter that are a dead giveaway. The first one is his mood after he throws up. He is immediately happy. He throws up and then starts jabbering away as if nothing even happened. The second giveaway is the up and down cycling his body does. Sometimes he may only throw up once, but his body cycles between a happy jabbering UP and a lethargic, unresponsive DOWN. It is as if his body is fighting itself, trying to find the balance again.

Carter ended up in the shower with Daddy. I went in to check on them, and Eric said I needed to look at Carter’s belly because something didn’t look right. When Daddy gets concerned, I know there’s something wrong! Carter’s belly was HUGE! It was descended and his belly button had gone from and innie to an outie. I have never seen his tummy so swollen! I later learned that the sweet, fermented smell of the vomit and the swollen stomach are from the candida overgrowth in his system. The very thing that we are trying to kill off using the GAPS diet. The candida literally started to ferment the offending food, producing an enormous amount of gas.

His stomach stayed that way for almost 3 days and the dumping diarrhea continued for 2. All of this from cauliflower. Less than a quarter of a cup eaten over 3 days. But there is good news!!! If we had trialed cauliflower before the introduction of the GAPS diet, I am sure we would have ended up in the ER and would probably still be there, trying to keep him hydrated. I am amazed at the difference we have seen in only 3 short weeks. The hard work is paying off!

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?