Hello! I am going to start with the disclaimer that I am horrible at keeping a blog. I get distracted easily, life gets busy, I get bored with updating, it just doesn't usually turn out well. This time, however, I feel that I have a bit more motivation to keep this up. My family and I are about to embark on a new journey with our diet, which will be a huge change to our daily lives. Our youngest daughter was just tested for allergies. We discovered that she is allergic to soy, cows milk protein (dairy), gluten, and pollen. The Cows milk protein allergy we already knew about, she was diagnosed at 2 months old and we had been dealing with that most her life. The good news with that one is there is a high chance she is outgrowing the allergy. More blood tests were done and we are awaiting the results. The Soy one was not a complete surprise either. When she was about 9 months we attempted to give her soy formula, the result was even more spitting up (I forgot to mention, she also had GERD, which is an extreme case of acid reflux that caused her to spit up constantly and in large quantities) and bloody diapers. The Gluten thing came last minute. At Layna's one year appointment they discovered that rather than gaining weight, she had lost a pound. The doctor began asking me a gazillion questions about her eating habits and her diapers. It came up that Layna was still having poopy diapers nearly every diaper change, and on top of that there was un-digested food in her diapers. It turned out that she already had an appointment the next day at the allergy clinic, so her pediatrician told me to go to her appointment and see what they find and in the mean time schedule a weight check for two weeks. At the allergy appointment they went over every little detail of her medical history. Her weight came up and he also asked me several question about her poop (color, consitancy, frequency, these were detailed questions!) and her eating habits. He said he would like to do some blood tests for a gluten allergy. Low and behold they came back positive. He then ordered additional blood tests for it (that we are also waiting to hear the results for). Everything would soon be changing for us.
I will admit that leaving the allergy specialist clinic last week I was most intimidated by the gluten allergy. I underestimated how serious this soy allergy was. Soy is in everything. Celiac disease has become more common (or at least it is more diagnosed and made known more), so the world has embraced the gluten free thing. Soy, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be as common for allergies. I found several prepackaged snack foods that were gluten free, soy was in all of them.
This blog is intended to keep everyone up to date on our journey. Our family especially will be going through this with us and we will all have to make adjustments for Layna's health. I will say as intimidating and overwhelming as it all seems, we have been gluten and soy free for the last week and I have already noticed a difference in Layna. She had her first spit-up free day, which for her is HUGE. Her diapers are getting more normal, and she actually played with other kids and went to other adults the other day. For those of you who know her, you know that while she has always been a sweet baby, she is very clingy and fussy. She only wants her mom and dad and was fussy about 80% of the time. She sleeps poorly, and just has always needed a bit extra in the attention area. We had a play date the other day and she actually got down and played with other kids, it was amazing and made my heart smile. I know now she wasn't just a "fussy" baby, she just has had stomach issues and hasn't felt good for the past year! Who can blame her? I know that every bit of effort and every change and sacrifice will be worth it. Seeing her happy meant more to me than I can ever explain.
So welcome to our journey!
