Bell Peppers

The part for our dishwasher came today, just as I was halfway through the pile of dishes on the counter. I screwed the little bolt in, loaded the dishwasher, and started it. It hummed away merrily while I dried and put away the dishes I had washed. It seems to work great now.

Baby E is sleeping, finally, and I need to go to bed too. She kept us awake for most of the night last night.

After several weeks of avoiding nightshades, we decided to test our luck with some Chicken A La King I'd made and frozen a number of weeks ago. It had chicken, rice milk, green bell peppers and mushrooms in it.

Baby E just had a piece or two of the chicken, but she strongly disliked the sauce and wouldn't eat the chicken--always a bad sign. I noticed, too, that she started pulling at her ears and rubbing her eyes during the meal--another bad sign.

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When she fell and bumped her head (with some help from her sister) right after dinner, though, that really complicated matters.

She spent the next several hours being fussy and whiny, holding her head, rubbing her eyes, passing lots of gas, acting like her stomach hurt, and intermittently flailing around screaming. It's so hard to know exactly what's wrong when she's unable to communicate exactly what she's feeling. She kept fussing, wanting to nurse, and saying "ow". She screamed whenever I tried to put her down and walk away, and she worked herself into an absolute frenzy within minutes when we tried to put her to bed. It's hard to explain the intensity with which she cries when she's in pain like that--it's definitely different from a "don't-want-to-go-to-sleep" or even an angry tantrum cry.

Between the head bump, the nightshades she had eaten, and her cold, we didn't know what to do or think. The pupils of her eyes seemed fine and she didn't have any of the classic symptoms of a head injury (plus, she hadn't cried all that hard or for very long, and didn't have much of a bump on her head). But she kept crying, seeming to be in lots of pain, and acting very unlike her normal self.

We agreed that if she didn't improve soon, or got worse, we would call the doctor. Just as we were trying to decide whether to call, she finally fell asleep, and she did seem better after that. Her symptoms were the classic "something's not right" and "baby in pain" signs we've become accustomed to when she eats food containing corn. But we're pretty sure she didn't have corn, and she reacted similarly the last time we ate this same meal.

We spent a worrisome night checking on her frequently when she was sleeping, and being up with her when (more often than not) she woke crying or slept fitfully, whimpering. She was up many times during the night for extended periods of time, and finally ended up tossing and turning in our bed for a few hours before falling into a deep sleep an hour or two before it was time to get up.

She woke up in a great mood and seemed to be feeling fine, but after mid-morning she was grumpy and fussy all day--not surprising for a child as tired as she had to be. I was barely functional today, too, and the older girls--both coming down with colds now--weren't much better. We just did Bible, math, phonics and reading today, and left it at that.

I'm just so glad that Baby E's pain-filled sleepless nights seem to be avoidable simply by changing our diet.

The prospect of cutting out all nightshades in addition to corn and legumes, though, seems rather bleak. If we do end up having to take that step, it will certainly significantly limit our already-limited diet.

We're not going to make assumptions, though. Maybe it was the mushrooms and not the green pepper that caused her trouble. Maybe she's allergic to only green peppers, and not other nightshades (although her response to potatoes in the past has not been encouraging in that respect). Maybe there was some trace of unidentified corn or soy in the meal. Maybe it really was the bump on her head, or just her being fussy and grouchy because of her cold or some other reason.

In some ways it would be so much easier if she had more clear and specific allergy symptoms. If she got a distinctive rash every time she was exposed to an allergen, at least we'd know she wasn't just being fussy for some other reason. With symptoms like crying and sleeplessness, it's a matter of degree--and, for a large part, of instinct. We know when she's not acting "normal" and when something is abnormal to a large enough degree that we know something is really wrong.

We're cautious, though, for several reasons. We don't want to jump to conclusions or make assumptions.

For one thing, we don't want to start cutting out more and more foods and making our lives more difficult without being sure it's really necessary.

For another thing, my first thought that she might be reacting to something has occasionally been wrong.

For instance, I once thought Baby E was reacting to having her face washed with a baby wipe that had several iffy (possibly corn or soy) ingredients. But, after trying unsuccessfully several times to reproduce the results, I decided that my sister-in-law was right: she'd just gotten red streaks on her face because I'd rubbed a little too hard trying to get a stubborn crusty off her face, not because she'd reacted to the wipe solution. She has very sensitive skin which turns red easily--just the pressure from picking her up gently, the grip of a hand on her little fingers to help her walk, the contact point where she sat down, or the touch of her clothes on her skin can leave red marks on her skin which take quite a few minutes to fade.

Cornstarch in the diapers, the wrong laundry soap, or the chemicals from disposable diapers do definitely seem to cause problems for her--probably because they all involve prolonged contact of fairly significant amounts of substances against her skin and mucous membranes. But brief, occasional skin contact with things like baby wipes, rubbing alcohol and other external substances doesn't seem to have a drastic effect on her.

It's really good news that I don't have to worry too much about her touching a baby wipe containing corn derivatives or a newspaper printed with soy-derived ink. Putting those things in her mouth may be another story, but I haven't seen any clear contraindication to external exposure with small amounts of allergens. That's such a relief. Even though I still try to minimize her skin contact with corn and soy as much as possible, it's nice to have at least that one thing I don't need to be quite so careful about.

I don't look forward to the trials with nightshades that await. My sister Sparrow has severe problems with nightshades, and I know how ill even trace amounts of any nightshade make her. We'll take Baby E and me off nightshades again for a week or two, then I'll probably try mushrooms first a few times to make sure it wasn't the mushrooms she was reacting to. Then we'll probably try bell peppers again, then potatoes, and finally tomatoes. Just pinpointing whether she's allergic to nightshades or not will be a weeks- or months-long process that very well may involve quite a few painful days and miserable sleepless nights, and of course could be potentially dangerous if she were to have a severe reaction. More likely, though, just lots of discomfort.

That, or we could go back to the allergist and have a skin test done again. That would be fairly definitive if it were positive (and she does have a definite history of positive skin tests to foods she has these kinds of issues with), and could save us a lot of trial and error. If it were negative we'd still have to do the oral challenges to see whether she had a differently-mediated allergy or an intolerance to the foods, but at least we'd know there was little chance of an anaphylactic reaction.

However, the allergist seemed to discourage us from testing for too many things. The more foods you test for, he said, the more the chances of a false positive. Testing for too many things can be counterproductive. The tests are rather costly and time-consuming, not to mention somewhat invasive and uncomfortable.

But, on the other hand, a reaction from an oral challenge is probably more uncomfortable and severe than a reaction to a skin test, and with the skin test at least we'd have medical personnel on hand in case of (an admittedly unlikely) severe reaction.

Maybe we'll do something in between. I think what we may end up doing is waiting until she's recovered from this current illness (she hardly coughed at all today, and her runny nose seems to be drying up as AJ's runny nose and general ill-feeling increases). Then we'll probably test mushrooms (which I think won't be a problem) and after that at least one nightshade (maybe tomatoes, which she's been begging to eat because she likes the bright red color). If she has a clear reaction that can't be attributed to anything else, then I'm guessing we'll probably head back to the allergist to test again before trying more oral challenges. But I really don't know.

We just have to continue taking it one day at a time, one decision at a time.