Cheating

I'm getting a bit frustrated with the elimination diet at this point. I'm so badly craving something, anything, other than chicken, brown rice, bananas, broccoli and pears. The amount of self-control this takes is astronomical.

I was going to wait until a few days after Baby E was eating a new food with no symptoms before I started eating it. After her nursing strike last week and knowing how much it affects her when I ingest corn or soy, I really don't want to contaminate my milk.

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Baby E doesn't like the butternut squash we tried to introduce last weekend. At most she's only been willing to eat small tastes here and there. So I wouldn't exactly call that a successful introduction of that food into her diet. Often when she refuses a food it later turns out that she's allergic to it. So then, do I add squash to my diet or not? I haven't taken the risk.

We've added barley and wheat back in to her diet now, but it's too early to tell whether they're bothering her or not. I haven't added them to my own diet, and I'm not sure yet whether I will.

When I was feeling so much better I thought maybe it was from the diet, but the last couple of days I'm feeling worse again. So I'm thinking it's more the amount of sleep or lack thereof that's affecting me more than what I'm eating.

It's much easier to stick to something like this when I'm feeling good and seeing improvement in Baby E. Even if I felt it was actually helping us to identify allergens, it would be a little easier. But I'm not sure the squash and barley have showed us anything except that Baby E doesn't like them. She sure didn't seem to have any ill effects from the squash, anyway. It's impossible to tell with anything since then, because her illness complicates things.

I haven't cheated so far, even just to take a tiny taste of something the rest of the family was eating. But I cheated today. I ate some fresh whole cranberries. I'd wanted to add them to our diet because they are high in some nutrients that we were missing. I highly doubt she's allergic to them, but I really don't think she'll eat them herself, as tart as they are.

So I went ahead and ate them. I probably shouldn't have. They tasted so wonderful. I guess I'll have to just wait and see how she responds to the cranberries in my milk. I don't like having to wonder, so I don't think I'll cheat like that again.

I think it would make things so much easier if I could just add in some basic things like baking soda and some kind of cooking oil (I tried skimming the chicken fat off the broth from cooking after chilling it, but it has too much water content to be useful). But I don't want to go too fast or add too many things at once. Our original goal was to leave 4-7 days between adding things, but we've already added a few faster than that.

We really need to be getting more calcium and folate in our diet, among other things. I'd like to add spinach to help with that, but am just not sure adding anything else in the next week or so is a good idea. I'd at least like to let Baby E get over her cold first. But even if we do add something else at that point, how will we tell whether it's the new food or the cumulative effect of the gluten?

I'm half tempted to give up on the elimination diet for now and start over again after the celiac screening. If she's feeling miserable anyway, how will we be able to tell which foods are problematic and which foods aren't? At the same time, it seems likely that her current discomfort is just from her cold. She's holding her head and ears when she cries, not her stomach. I think it likely that once she's over her cold she'll be just fine.

There's just no real evidence that the gluten is bothering her at all. We can't rule it out at this point, though, either. We're just in limbo.

This isn't so easy to figure out all by myself. I wish the medical professionals were a little more helpful.