Plodding Forward

Baby E seemed quite back to normal today.

After breakfast she had a couple of ounces of pumped milk in a bottle. When she realized that didn't make her sick, she wanted to nurse again.

She asked to nurse frequently today, and didn't have any excessive fussiness or strange symptoms other the crankiness inherent with missing a nap.

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She didn't ask to nurse before bed tonight, and I didn't try to persuade her to. My guess is that her discomfort last night had something to do with the sheer quantity of milk she ingested just before going to bed.

It could be that in such large quantities, the residue of allergens left in my milk was enough to bother her. Apparently it can take up to 2 weeks before proteins from a specific food completely stop being passed in breastmilk.

Or, it had nothing to do with anything except that so much milk made her sloshy in the tummy and maybe gave her reflux. When she woke up, maybe her tummy hurt a bit and she couldn't settle back down because she was hungry.

I don't know, but she's asleep for the night already well before 10. We'll see how she does tonight.

Interestingly enough, even though I didn't get much sleep last night I wasn't all that tired today. I felt really awful and excessively fatigued the first few days of our elimination diet. But the last few days I've had more energy and felt better than I have in quite some time.

My guess is that something about this elimination diet agrees with me, too, along with the changes we've been making to control dust mites.

In my research today, I discovered something interesting. According to at least one study, gliadin proteins (one of the proteins in gluten) have been shown to be passed undegraded in breastmilk in significantly higher quantities than many other food particles.

We haven't done any tests on Baby E for celiac; I'm going to ask her doctor to do that. I suppose it's possible that Baby E's hard-to-pinpoint reactions to so many things like bread and flour were due to a gluten issue rather than to cross-contamination or yeast grown on corn, etc.

It's probably a good thing to rule out, anyway, especially considering that we do have celiac on both sides of the family.

It's very common for people with celiac to manifest as being allergic to a huge variety of foods. In such cases those intolerances usually resolve themselves once gluten is removed from the diet and the gut heals. Another very relevant fact is that supposedly 40% of celiacs are also allergic to corn and soy. I also found out that the type of cancer my grandfather died from (intestinal non-hodgkin's lymphoma) is often linked to celiac disease.

Interesting, isn't it?

Speaking of health issues, I'd really appreciate everyone's thoughts and prayers for my Sis J who is away at college. She's been very sick for quite some time, and the doctors want to do yet another battery of extensive testing to try to figure out what's wrong. (She's not the sister with celiac, BTW.)

My mom flew out this morning to be with her and take her to doctor's appointments, since the only doctors covered by their insurance are a very long way from J's school. Apparently the exception for seeing a doctor outside the system if an in-system doctor is over 100 miles away only applies in true "emergencies." Grrr.

Please pray that she'll be able to get some answers and feel better soon. It's really making her university courses difficult for her, too. I'd really like to see her get healthier.

Little sister Amy has been ill, too, and could use some prayers for health also, as could my mom for health and safe travels.

I think I'm the healthiest sibling in the family at present, which isn't saying much. :) At one time or another we've all had chronic severe illnesses that the doctors can't seem to find answers or even a diagnosis for.