Resuming Sanity

Well, I'm feeling much better today than I have been the last couple of days. Two days of little sleep and eating almost nothing can really send a person for a tail-spin.

I think the reason I was feeling so much better after the first few days on the elimination diet probably had little to do with what I actually was or was not eating.

I'm guessing it had more to do with the fact that I was getting better sleep and eating more protein earlier in the day, and maybe even more food overall throughout the day.

The last couple of days, I didn't do so well.

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We ran out of a few of our basics, and because of a combination of factors (no car, sick baby, tiredness making cooking less appealing, etc) I ended up just eating very little (giving most of the chicken and rice to Baby E, for example).

Since I'm a whopping 104 lbs (when bloated and retaining water) and have hypoglycemic tendencies on top of producing milk for Baby E, my body doesn't handle that well.

By 3:00 p.m. yesterday I had managed to eat a grand total of one banana and half a pear. A third of a cup of rice and most of a chicken thigh did little to redeem the situation by that point.

On top of yesterday's similar meals, it was just too much. Or rather, not enough. My blood sugar must have been pretty low by that time. Adding in seemingly worse-than-usual monthly hormone swings clinched the downward spiral.

By the time DH got home from work I was in full melt-down mode. Everything seemed hopeless. I was crying over nothing in particular, approximately every 3 minutes.

A solid meal and some time to rest (thanks to DH going grocery shopping and taking over with the kids) helped a lot. Having DH take care of the sleepless Baby E while I went to bed helped even more. Even though she seems to be sleeping well and is sleeping through the night once she gets to sleep, she hasn't been going to sleep until 1 or 2 a.m. no matter what we do.

This morning I'm back to measuring food quantities and keeping track of what I'm eating so I can make sure I'm taking in enough nutrients. If I eat 2-3 cups each of brown rice and broccoli, 2-3 chicken thighs and at least 3-4 pieces of fruit each day, I do all right.

That quantity gives me a little over 400 mcgs of folate, far more than enough Vitamin C, and almost 1400 calories. It's more protein and carbohydrates than I need, but severely lacking in vitamins A, most of the B vitamins, Vitamin E, iron and calcium, among other things. If I ate more broccoli that would help a bit, so I need to work on that. But those 5 foods just don't make a complete balanced diet by themselves.

The allergist who suggested that we consider an elimination diet if Baby E continued having indeterminate allergic reactions is unavailable. He's out on paternity leave (just had a new baby) and they don't know when he'll be back. So that leaves me trying to figure this out on my own. Frankly, I feel I'm in over my head.

My plan for today is to find and get an appointment with a dietician or nutritionist (what's the difference between the two, anyway?). I want to find one that's experienced dealing with extensive food allergies and elimination diets. That way I can find out whether we're on the right track or what we need to do differently.

Hopefully he or she can help me figure out what to add in what order and with what frequency. I'd like to get to the point where we're eating the right quantities of a good variety of foods to be healthy. We need to be getting enough of all the important nutrients as soon as possible.

Baby E does seem to be feeling better today. I'm pretty convinced by this point that her misery the first few days of the week was related to illness and not gluten. She seems to be doing quite well with wheat. I really doubt she has celiac disease or even gluten intolerance.

We'll probably still do the blood test in a few weeks just to be sure, but I'm not worrying about it for now. For now, the focus is on introducing foods one at a time to identify any allergens.