Back to Baseline

Well, Baby E is definitely reacting to something. She has what looks like thickly-spread acne on both cheeks, tiny raised red bumps on her body, and severely exacerbated reflux. She's having abnormal BMs, her stomach and head are bothering her, and she's just generally miserable. She's also quite congested.

Some of that seems to be a cold, but the rashes and other symptoms are typical for her reactions to foods.

Last night she was up every hour, and didn't really sleep between. Even when I finally brought her into my bed she just tossed and turned and grunted and moaned all night long. After weeks of sleeping through the night or waking once at most, this is quite unusual. She normally only does the not-sleeping thing when she's reacting to something. I'm just so thankful the sleepless nights are a rare thing now, instead of being all the time as it was for almost the first year and a half of her life.

It seems to be something in my milk that's bothering her this morning. She nursed just a bit and then refused more.

It's always a challenge to pinpoint what's causing reactions, but at least now we have a fairly varied basic diet that we can always go back to when we need to re-establish a baseline.

We only have to avoid corn, soy, oats, kidney beans, apples, banana, mushrooms, mold, eggs, dairy products, coconut, avocado, blackberry leaves, nuts/peanuts/seeds, fish/shellfish, all legumes, yeast, coffee, chocolate, millet, wild rice and all refined/enriched/bleached/fermented products. For our baseline diet we also limit sugars, rotate grains, and avoid artificial colors, flavors and preservatives. That seems to keep her fairly reaction-free when we can avoid incidental exposures to crumbs or food on other kids' hands.

That may seem like a lot of dietary restrictions, but compared to the time we were limited to just 5 foods it really does leave a lot of options. It makes for a pretty healthy diet, too.