Month 11

August 2008

It has been a month of ups and downs. My diet still seems to be working ok for DD, but she seems to react to almost everything I give her directly. She reacted to chicken (which she's fine with through my breastmilk). :(

She has also reacted to a few things that I've introduced into my diet: a goji flavored kombucha (later found out that goji is in the nightshade family, so that makes sense), and she had a major reaction to stevia. She even had blood in her poo from that one, which was weird because so far, dairy is the only thing that causes blood. So I immediately took that out of my diet and started her back on some probiotics (Kirkman Labs Bifido Complex). That last reaction was horrible- I always try to blame symptoms on something else- the crabiness and extra poop are because she's teething, her face looks more red in these lights, etc. But I finally realized that although she was teething, all the symptoms pointed to allergic reaction. I stopped using the stevia, and things got better almost immediately. I had originally started using stevia in an effort to take all sugars out of my diet, just in case a yeast overgrowth (candida) is contributing to our problem- take out the sugars and grains, and starve the yeast.

Now that my diet's somewhat under control, we're going to start working on some serious gut healing. I stopped all my supplements since DD seemed to be reacting to one or more of them, so we're going a different route. I'm starting my research (and experimentation) of cultured foods. I'm going to make my first batch of fermented pickled beets (from Nourishing Traditions), but using just sea salt (instead of salt and whey) since DD can't handle dairy. I've also been drinking kombucha daily, and am going to try growing my own scoby and making it myself since it is SO expensive!! I hope to also eventually get some water kefir grains and start making that too- but one (or two) thing at a time!

I'm also looking into other ways to get nutrients since I can't do supplements. First, and most important (since I'm off all dairy), is my calcium. I know that there is some calcium in my bone broth that I have every day, but I'm not sure how much... so I needed to find something else. I just found out that nettle has a lot of calcium, so I am going to start making nettle infusions and adding those to my daily routine.