Progress!

I am truly amazed at the progress we have made in the last several days.  Joshua has been eating three meals a day of GAPS-legal foods since Thursday AM.  We started with butternut squash boiled in broth (and pureed in that broth); but I was a little disappointed that he was not eating anything else.  He ate butternut squash for three meals Thursday.  By the next day, however, Jeff had a stellar idea.  "Let's puree the pork in with the squash!"

As an experiment I tried the pork pieces shredded up but not pureed.  He ate all the squash but did not touch the meat.  He did want seconds though, so I took my immersion blender and pureed the pork in the remaining squash.  I did have to push that first bite.  I took a moment when his mouth was open, screaming, and stuck a dab on his tongue.  And he was mad, but then he swallowed.  So he reached for another bite, swallowed, then yelled (at me) about it.  But he kept going, even despite his yells, until he silenced himself altogether except for exclamations of "Mmmmm." 

Sunday we added spinach to the puree, along with a bit more broth so it resembled more of a thick soup than "mashed potatoes."  He ate that readily, even though the color changed.  Today we added carrots, and decreased the amount of squash (up until today he has been going through one entire squash per day) by half.  A little more broth, and we have been putting a small spoonful of rendered lard.  Initially we had added a few drops of honey, but now we are leaving the honey out entirely.

So as of today he has had three full meals with more of the broth, three different vegetables, and a good amount of meat.  But that is not the ONLY progress we have made...

Joshua is starting to vocalize with more syllables than "da da da" for the first time in a few months.  The words he has lost are already starting to return.  Just this morning he would wave "bye bye" but what he said sounded like "da da."  By tonight, he said his first "Bye bye" also in a couple months.  I was so flabbergasted that I was tempted to think it was all in my head, but he waved and everything.  And his overall demeanor has improved greatly.  Fewer tantrums and fits, more of the joyful laughter he had us so used to.

Now the update on us...

Jeff is still in stage 1 of the intro, but considering adding the egg yolks in soon.  We will do the skin test before we introduce the ghee, just to make sure.

I have been eating the raw egg yolks, soft boiled eggs, and ghee with my soups, and I am loving it.  I am feeling less hungry, and the flavor it adds to the soup is pretty fantastic.  I have not tried the fermented fish yet, but I have been making kefir, so tomorrow I will strain some to make kefir way, and then I will make my first batch of cultured sardines.  I am not exactly thrilled or excited about it, haha, but I figure if it is part of the protocol, I should at least try it.  Then I will be moving on to stage 3 of the intro (hooray, mashed avocado and almond butter "pancakes")!

Tonight we tested egg yolk from duck eggs on Joshua's skin (he is allergic to chicken eggs but I have read that many people who cannot tolerate chicken eggs can have duck eggs).  Since stage 2, which we will be moving him into in a few days, has egg yolks as part of the protocol, we want to see if the duck eggs might be an option.  I do not think we will test ghee on him, though.  Since we already know he is allergic to dairy, Dr. Campbell-McBride's suggestion is to go through the whole intro (all six stages) and then introduce dairy in a very structured approach, beginning with the ghee and moving forward from there with increasing "allergen potential."  So I will render chicken fat so we can add that to his soups, and render more lard for cooking the foods in the subsequent stages of the intro.

Right now the fact that we are not all on the same stage is not that tricky, but I am hoping that we will all catch up at some point (maybe while I am waiting for the fish to culture before I move on to stage 3).  Either way, I am preparing myself for the eventuality of being on full GAPS before my guys, and preparing myself to juggle the two.

For the first couple weeks trying to find a rhythm has made consistency in just about every other arena very difficult, but I think we are finally getting back into the swing of things.  This has not been easy.  It has challenged us on multiple levels, but I am very glad we are doing it.

Yogurt Nog?

So, I think it goes without saying that soup three meals a day can get old really quickly.  Now that I am on stage 2, I decided that I should mix breakfast up a bit.  I have been gradually increasing the amount of homemade raw yogurt I've been eating, and today is when I started with egg yolks.  That gave way to this glorious idea:

Yogurt Nog

1/2 to 3/4 c plain homemade yogurt
2 pastured, organic egg yolks (carefully separated)
honey to taste

Blend on low speed, pour and enjoy!

Now, I actually had adapted that this morning when I had it, I poured it over some butternut squash puree (the puree we have been making for Joshua, butternut squash boiled and mashed in bone broth).  The tartness of the yogurt combined with the sweetness of the squash actually made it taste peachy.  It was like I was eating some kind of creamy peach porridge.

I know, it is a very simple recipe.  But after a week on soups for every meal, glorious is the most appropriate word, because having something not-soup for breakfast made the rest of the day so much better for me. Also it was surprisingly filling, and is really soothing for the stomach.  Dr. Campbell-McBride says that raw egg yolks are so readily absorbed that they require almost no digestion. And of course the yogurt is probiotic, so it is good for the stomach as well.

So, there you have it. Healthy, good for the digestion, GAPS legal. My new favorite breakfast (until I get scrambled eggs back in the lineup!)

Little Victories

So, just one day later, I am happy to report that Joshua ate three meals today and one snack, all GAPS-legal foods, though not a lot of variety.  Most of what he ate today was butternut squash (that had been cooked in homemade beef broth) and broccoli (also cooked in the broth).  The squash we actually mashed in broth, and also added some pastured lard, and a bit of honey.  So, he did get some broth and some good fats.  However, he is still not drinking the broth on his own (but I have "dream fed" him a little bit here and there while he was sleeping. We are going to work more on the broth, and continue the (diminishing) juice with (increasing) kombucha.  I am very hopeful.  My child who refused to eat for two days ate every meal today. Praise the Lord!

As for Jeff and I, we are doing pretty well.  While we have had some mild die-off symptoms, it has been a pretty gentle intro for us.  I had a bit of a rough time today with nausea (that seemed to be related to blood sugar).  I have had a hard time getting enough to eat in a day because of course there is not a lot of variety in stage one of intro.  Textures easily put me off, as does too much repetition.  So I have been eating, and not skipping any meals or anything, but maybe not eating as much as I should be.  And I felt it today.  Nausea aside, though, I am feeling pretty good.  A little tired, which is probably also due to not quite getting enough to eat.  But my sinus infection is clearing itself up with no antibiotics (just PRObiotics), and my mental clarity is already improving some.

Jeff has had no problem always keeping a cup of broth nearby, and eating several bowls of soup per meal.  He has a man's appetite, which maybe supersedes the issues of repetition that I struggle with.

Tomorrow I am moving into stage two of the intro, while Jeff is going to stay on stage one a little longer (as is Joshua, of course).  I am not presently dealing with any digestive issues and my die-off seems to be slacking off, so I'm going for the extra nutrients and a little variety.  I will start by adding an egg yolk to my breakfast soup, and maybe add some ghee to lunch and dinner's soups.  I am not sure if I am brave enough to try the fermented fish recipes yet, but I am working up to it.  With a few more options to get some good nutrition on stage 2, I will not hurry it too much, because I want to take my time on each stage to make sure I am letting the diet do its work.  That is going to be hard, though, because stage 3 of intro is when I can start having the "pancakes" made with almond meal...not to mention ripe mashed avocado.  Those will certainly add some nice variety and substance.

One thing we're trying to do is not eat one kind of stock for too long.  Right now a batch of stock lasts us about two days, and we alternate types of meat.  Tomorrow morning we will be finished with the beef stock, and we will switch to pork (made from uncured ham hocks and neckbones).  With the pork we like to do winter squashes and spinach and other greens.  With the beef we have done a lot of yellow squash and zucchini, broccoli florets, and carrots.  We are making a special trip to a market in Atlanta tomorrow, where we will get some fish for fish stock.  Jeff is working on his Whiz-Bang Chicken Plucker, and after that is finished we will have some chickens to add to the mix.

Things I am starting to notice already - my skin is getting a more youthful glow again already, and that makes me happy.  I have heard from some others that the ample supply of collagen in the broths would have that effect, as well as possibly healing things like stretch marks and that lovely "extra skin" from pregnancy from the inside out.  These are not the reason I am doing GAPS, but hey - what a perk!!  I have not seen any effect yet on stretch marks, but seriously I will just be content when people go back to guessing way too young for my age.

Some of the less positive things:

I really miss bread.  Jeff, who has been bread free for much longer, does not seem to empathize with me much in this craving.  I went from regular (soaked or sprouted) bread eating to none at all far too quickly!

The grocery store.  Oh my word.  We needed to stop in and get a few things we did not expect to run out of, produce wise.  Let me just tell you that going through a grocery store when you are in the first week of GAPS intro is basically pure torture.  Shiny pictures of processed junk that I otherwise do not have nearly so hard a time turning down turn me into a drooling mess.  And there is chocolate around every corner!  We do not really shop in actual grocery stores very much, and maybe some good planning would have prevented this trip.  So, if you are starting on GAPS and you have good farms/farmers markets where you can get what you need, avoid the grocery store until you get that gut flora in check.  Yeast totally exacerbates carb cravings.  Kick the yeast, and THEN go to the grocery store.  (On a totally Trekie side note that will make my father and my friend Monique very proud:  Jeff and I have had several conversations about how yeast (and bacterial overgrowth, too) are basically The Borg.  Think about it, they take over, they speak in the royal plural, and they are very difficult to refuse.  "Resistance is futile. Chocolate can be assimilated.")

There are ups and downs, and we have experienced many in just the short time we have been doing this.  But even with the downs, I whole-heartedly recommend GAPS to anyone who is dealing with children with multiple allergies (or if you have multiple allergies), signs of digestive distress, or even just mild indications that your gut flora might be off.  It is not easy, but it is worth it.

Getting your child to eat GAPS Foods...can it be done?

So, this is where we are right now.  Jeff and I are fully on intro, and Joshua....Joshua is not really eating. We were offering him "transition foods," by putting homemade sweet potato chips in his broth, or letting him have a banana at the beginning of the day, but the starchiness of those foods perpetuate the problem (feeding the bad gut bacteria) and prevent him from getting hungry enough to start eating the GAPS foods.  We are offering him plenty of food, and he went most of the day Monday without eating any of it; then he devoured lots of cooked-in-broth broccoli florets that night for dinner.  He went to town.  But he maybe overdid it, and he did not get a lot of the FAT from the broth the broccoli had absorbed, and so now....he is constipated.  Being constipated, he is not very interested in food.

Addressing the constipation is interesting.  I know it is partly because he needs more fat, and the source of fat that is most accessible is the fat in our broth.  He will not drink the broth (even though before he started self restricting he LOVED to drink broth) while awake, so we have been waiting until he is asleep.  We hauled the bottles (that we used twice back when he was nursing, haha) back out of storage and cleaned them.  Then, we put some bone broth in the bottles once it had cooled sufficiently (but the fat was still liquid, very important). Joshua gets to a certain point of sleepiness where the pacifier just falls straight out of his mouth, and I waited for that moment to slip in the bottle. He sucked a few times (though a little trickled out of the side of his mouth) before realizing something was up.  He started to wake, and I quickly slipped the paci back in and he settled back down.  We did this several times with him in my arms like when he was nursing.  Eventually he woke enough to roll over onto the bed, he put up with me giving him one or two more sucks like that, and then  rolled over onto his belly.  I did not want to aggravate him or interrupt his sleep further, so I left it at that.  We'll give it another go at bedtime (maybe rocking him in the rocker at the same time?).  Anyway, the broth is so he gets enough fat to help move things along.  Also, we are giving him some kombucha with each cup of juice he drinks.  Dr. Campbell-McBride talks about probiotics being key in resolving constipation, and her other suggestion is an enema (with probiotics included in the water).  But with all the frequent diarrhea Joshua has had in the past, he is really touchy when it comes to his "diaper area," and I am just not prepared to create one more battle by trying to give him an enema.

The juice is totally not GAPS legal, but it is the only thing he'll drink right now, and is a great vehicle for the kombucha.  Honestly it is mostly water, with a splash of juice, and a little more than a splash of kombucha.  It was more juice, but we have been gradually stepping that down.  So he is still drinking plenty of liquids throughout the day, and I am confident that once we resolve the constipation his appetite will return and he'll eat the veggies.

If all of this seems a little drastic (as I am fully aware that it may) I should explain that Joshua is your "typical GAPS patient."  Every time we have removed a food he is allergic to, he is fine and symptom free for a little while, and then develops a new allergy. Milk and eggs were the two at the beginning, and all his eczema began to disappear and his bowel movements normalized very shortly after removing them, this lasted a few weeks.  Then he was suddenly reacting again, this time to wheat and corn.  We remove those, and he develops an allergy to coconut (we had been giving him coconut milk) and to oranges (and this is when we discovered his allergy to our much-avoided soy and peanuts).  He develops an allergy to peas (related to soy), we get all of this out of his diet, and then after the typical symptom free period, he develops an allergy to rice and (apparently, though it has not been tested yet) quinoa.  I mentioned this tendency to his ped and she shrugged it off.  But, because of this trend, I am fairly confident that if we keep removing foods, he will keep developing new allergies. This is something Dr. Campbell-McBride has said is standard to GAPS patients, and I had mentioned my concerns about this to his doc long before reading Gut And Psychology Syndrome.

So, basically, we are covering all of this in massive amounts of prayer.  How can I let my son go on eating only one or two foods, and foods that will worsen his condition, at that?  But waiting this out feels pretty cruel, too.  Massive amounts of prayer are the only way I am getting through the day right now.  Still, I am convinced that this is the best route.  Because of all his allergies, the foods on full GAPS are basically the only foods he is not allergic to, but how can I get him to eat any of those foods without resolving the gut flora issues that have him craving starchy foods? Prayer needs to be (and is, now) my first response, my constant practice.  God gave us this boy, and He is obviously the one we should look to in caring for him.

GAPS Days 1 & 2: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

So yesterday we officially started GAPS, and we survived!

We are easing into the intro, since we still had some perishable non-GAPS foods to get rid of, and we are moving nice and slow so we do not overwhelm Joshua.  He is not eating a lot right now, and from what I have heard about young toddlers on GAPS, that is pretty normal, but I am a mom so of course it is a little hard for me.  We had a breakthrough, tonight, though, and I will get to that a bit later.

First, let me tell you about the few weeks before we started. This is a little long, but bear with me (especially if you have kids with food issues).

Joshua developed yet another food allergy (rice), and when we removed all the rice from his diet he started self-restricting his food. He has done this before, when we removed corn.  Basically, whenever we discover and remove an allergen, Joshua restricts what food he will eat a little more.  Some of his allergies never had the chance to cause this problem.  We knew he was allergic to dairy since before we started him on solid foods, and we knew about the eggs shortly thereafter. We never gave him anything with peanut because we know his cousins are very allergic.  And we never gave him anything with soy because it is a phyto-estrogen and therefore we follow a "no unfermented soy for our family and no soy for growing boys." policy.  But we were giving him organic grits, blue corn chips, and things like that.  He loved the blue corn chips with salsa.  At that point he would also happily eat whatever we put in front of him. He gnawed on strips of pastured pork chop or grass fed steak, and hungrily ate up bacon and sausage.  He ate a whole host of vegetables, including green beans, broccoli, carrots, summer squash, collard greens sauteed in rendered bacon fat, swiss chard cooked the same way, raw cucumbers,.  He ate all kinds of fruits, bananas, strawberries, oranges, melons of myriad varieties, apples, and pears.  We took the corn away, as well as oranges and wheat.  It was a big transition, and he responded by restricting his foods even further. He would still eat potatoes and sweet potatoes, but he stopped eating most other vegetables except for broccoli and carrots, he stopped eating all fruits except bananas and strawberries. And he was eating rice chex and veggie straws (not proud of that but they were non-allergenic snacks that traveled well), as well as occasional Enjoy Life bars and fruit squeeze pouches. 

Well, a week and a half ago we went to see the allergist for the first time.  He explained that he was not a fan of the type of machine that our pediatrician did Joshua's blood test on, and wanted to reconfirm a few of the allergens with a scratch test.  Well, that told us that some of the allergies he had actually were much stronger than the blood test showed, AND that he is allergic to rice.

We pulled the rice from his diet and suddenly Joshua only wanted to eat bananas, sausage, potatoes, and fruit squeezes.  He would not even touch broccoli (which was definitely his favorite vegetable until that point).  Other things were concerning me, namely that Joshua used to use the new words he was learning all the time.  He would look out the window and say "chicken" while pointing to the chickens.  Now he just says "da" for a lot of those same things.  He still says "Mama," "Dada," "Please," and "Detta (for shupetta)."  But a lot of his other words are being replaced with "Da."

Now it is confession time: I only read the second half of Gut and Psychology Syndrome at first.  We were only concerned with food allergies, so I only read about the food.  In the few days before the diet, I started reading the first half of the book, and I kind of went a little nuts.  I started reading about they "typical GAPS patient," and felt like I was reading about Joshua.  Suddenly limiting his food is something Dr. Campbell-McBride spent a bit of time on.  Then I was reading the blog of another GAPS mom and she talked about her child losing words and mentioned some behavioral things I had been picking up on in Joshua, too.  Beyond that, I learned that this was a long time coming.  Joshua, like many GAPS patients and like this one blogger's kid, had persistent cradle cap and a persistent yeasty diaper rash as an infant.  My whole world was spinning for a minute as I realized that Joshua is not just a kid with food allergies.  He is a GAPS patient.  But now I had something new to panic over, if he is so intent on self limiting his foods, how am I going to get him to eat the GAPS foods?

I am going through all of this here on the blog because I had no idea some of the "quirks" I was noticing in Joshua's behavior were common to other GAPS kids.  I had no idea that sudden self-restriction of foods was a sign that behaviorally a child could be headed toward the Autism Spectrum, or that the persistent cradle cap and diaper rash could have been my first clues that his gut flora was off in a way that could trigger food allergies and all the things we are dealing with now.  And right now you might be thinking that your highly allergic child is just that, and maybe a lifetime of eating around those allergies is not so bad, after all.  Especially because GAPS can be so intimidating at first glance.  But if your child is like the "typical GAPS patient," maybe it is worthwhile to pursue.  Dr. Campbell-McBride also mentions the fact that for the GAPS patient, simply removing allergens only goes so far, as the patient will likely develop other allergies if the condition is untreated.  This definitely seems the case for Joshua.  It seemed like he never reacted to at least half his allergens until he had been eating them regularly for some time.

OK, finally, tonight's breakthrough.  We tried to use the ABA method that Dr. Campbell-Mcbride talks about in the chapter "Oh No! It's Feeding Time," of GAPS.  We had limited success.  We stuck to our guns, and offered Joshua a sweet potato chip (homemade and fried in pastured lard) for every spoonful of broth he ate.  But he never willingly ate any.  We did give him some in a dropper, and gave him a chip after each time that he swallowed, but he didn't ever choose the broth.  I know it is a process, but we were not sure if we could handle more nights of screaming fits.  Tonight, we dipped the sweet potato chips in his soup puree, and it worked!  The idea is that:  as we gradually give him probiotics and feed him the GAPS approved foods, we will also decrease the quantity of the non-GAPS foods, and then he'll be fully on intro.

And our mistakes so far:  I have regularly been making kombucha, kefir, and other probiotic foods at various points over the last three years, so when she says to start with like a teaspoonful of sauerkraut juice in some cooled down broth, I scoffed.  We have all consumed a good amount of probiotic foods before, so why start so small.  Well, Joshua had horrible diarrhea and diaper rash today, and I know it is because I put a splash of kombucha in his drink not once, but 4 times.  My intentions were good: correct the gut flora imbalance and he won't crave those horrible starchy foods, but we have to start small because it is a marathon, not a sprint.  For me, I have had monstrous headaches all day long (like, I can feel my pulse in my teeth).  I also overdid it on the kombucha yesterday.  What we are experiencing is called die-off, and it is the release of toxins (and therefore, these wondrous symptoms) that occurs when the pathogenic bacteria and yeast die off.  This is why you start slow.  I backed way off today on the probiotics for both Joshua and I, and slathered his poor backside with coconut oil.  By tonight he was already looking better.

So that's it, the good, the bad, the ugly.  I think we are going to make it.  I know that this is exactly what we need, so we are going to take baby steps all the way through intro and into full GAPS.  I am glad, reading other GAPS mom's experiences, that we have at least one medical professional that is fully supportive of our endeavor (Joshua's new allergist/immunologist, who said that though he'd never heard of it before, the premise makes a lot of sense). I have a feeling that his support is going to be necessary.

Taking The Plunge: GAPS

Many of you know that we have dealt with food allergies for some time.  While my only food allergy is to MSG (so I do not care if it ever gets reversed, because MSG is an excito-neurotoxin that can harm your brain, is addictive, and causes weight gain and I am glad I have a reason to avoid it that is "acceptable" even to non-health conscious people), my husband is allergic to dairy, coconut, and (as we recently discovered) to almonds; as well as being gluten intolerant.  Our son is allergic to dairy, soy (hooray, but still), corn, peanuts, eggs, coconut, and oranges; as well as appearing to be gluten intolerant.

When it was just dairy and coconut for Jeff, I was more than content to just cook around them.  I mean, 2 allergens does not make for a complicated kitchen routine.  We were already making just about everything from scratch, anyway, so it did not really interrupt our routine much.

Gluten intolerance, though, certainly mixed things up a bit.  We were making everything from soaked or sprouted whole grains and loving it.  While we were fairly low-carb, we did enjoy those carbs coming from whole grain pasta or a nice loaf of homemade whole wheat bread.  Gluten-free living was a definite and drastic switch.

Add to it Joshua's allergy to many of the foods we love (eggs, peanuts, oranges,etc) and this was one overwhelmed mama.  So here I am trying to make us all one meal and not use too many gross substitute foods and keep everyone satisfied.  Overwhelmed.

I had long been hearing of people going through GAPS or the Specific Carbohydrate Diet to reverse their food allergies, but I just figured that it would be too restricted for my husband to enjoy and too restricted to feed my toddler well.  Until suddenly it was not too restricted for Jeff.  He wanted to at least check it out.  So we ordered Gut and Psychology Syndrome off of Amazon (Can you believe they did not have it at our local library, or anywhere in the GA Pines library system?), and we got it yesterday.

While we still have a lot to read about the how's and the why's, we looked at the parameters of the diet.  Guess what we discovered?  It basically included the diet Joshua already eats (meat and veggies); but with the prerequisite that those foods be boiled in the broth.  We can handle that.  Not to mention that the broth is a good source of calcium, something that we have to work at with his dairy allergy.

So, all though the original plan was that Jeff go on GAPS (and I go through the intro phase with him for moral support), we have decided that the whole family is going on GAPS together, starting in March.  The delayed start is to give us the time to prepare, stock up (pun semi-intended) on soup bones from our friends at the farmer's market, join friends for dinner one last time, etc.

Initially I was really intimidated about going on GAPS, but now - while I know it will be a challenge - I am pretty excited about it.  We know it is a long term commitment.  We are talking about 2 years of a diet that takes some major commitment before we will even know if it worked for our food allergies.  But the possibility that we can take these two years and turn it into a lifetime of enjoying a variety of nutritious whole foods, that is pretty incredible.  So we are joining the myriad of real-food bloggers who have already taken the plunge, and we are going GAPS.

A Learning Winter

Earlier this fall I learned that I can, in fact, be consistent in things.  And so, I have been striving for more consistency every day (though it has not made its way into blogging, yet, really).  I always thought that I could never really keep a house, and so I never have.  I always thought that any new venture I began had to fizzle out after only a few tries.  And the five month long lapse in blogging might seem to confirm, that, except...

I have been learning to keep my house, really be consistent in menu planning, and get beyond the kick-off in the things I am doing; it just has not left me a lot of time to blog, as of yet.  I am learning that, after 29 years of believing myself to be a flibbertygibbit, the only way to kick that habit is in layers.

My sil and I are keeping a rotating schedule w/the kitchen chores (we share a kitchen). One of us empties the dishwasher, and the other sweeps.  This has proven really instrumental in keeping a kitchen, and the rest has kind of revolved around that.  So for the past several months I have been consistently keeping the kitchen clean.  I really think starting with a shared space was the way to go.  A few months back I added in the dining room (you know how when you are clutter prone everything seems to land on the dining room table?). On top of my heavily junk-magnetized table, we also have my dear Joshua, who gets a little too enthusiastic at meal times (i.e. some food ends up on the floor).  So now I am keeping two rooms, and working on the living room next.  I almost had that one down, but Christmas happened.  Since there are no room-rearranging holidays between now and next Christmas, I plan to be so solid in my routine that it does not take me a month to recover my living room.

Now, this may not seem like very much to accomplish in several months time, but here is the other side of the story.  Food Allergies.

This summer we discovered that Jeff was intolerant to gluten, and rearranging our lives around that was challenging, but not impossible.  We also knew that Joshua was allergic to milk and eggs.  So Trying to keep a consistent meal plan and eat around everyone's allergies was getting a little trickier.  Well, Joshua turned one in November, and with that came an allergy test.  It turns out that he is actually allergic to milk, eggs, peanuts, soy, corn, oranges, and coconut, and is sensitive to wheat and raw tomatoes.  It looks like he is intolerant to gluten in general, as well.  While the soy allergy really does not interfere with anything, all of the others do, and so in the last couple months our diet was pushed over the edge from mildly primal (not-as-strict paleo) to almost full-on paleo.  We still eat (raw) dairy, we just do not let Joshua.  In the midst of all of this, we are looking at going on GAPS to reverse Jeff's food allergies and gluten intolerance.  This is going to be a two-year project, though Jeff is going to be the only one who is exclusively GAPS for now (I want to see how it goes with Jeff before trying it with Joshua, also we want to make sure there is a nutritionist/dietician we can include to make sure Joshua is getting everything he needs if we DO put him on GAPS).

It is my desire to chronicle this journey on the blog, and also post as many allergy-friendly recipes as I can to help other parents of children with multiple food allergies.  That said, I have learned that some days it is more important to make sure I have everything prepped to make the meal than it is to blog about the meal.  I am learning about (and striving for) balance, and such sudden and drastic dietary changes can be overwhelming, so we are taking this one step at a time and just trying to be as content and healthy as we can where we have found ourselves.

A word to other new "allergy moms:"

It is so incredibly easy to stress out about food.  Especially when your allergic to everything child wanders into his cousins' room and you find him with a ring of "chocolate animals" around his mouth.  The other day Joshua had some "digestive issues" and I was racking my brain, recounting every minute of the few days prior, sure that he did not have exposure to any of the allergens we know about, when it suddenly hit me: Maybe he is just teething, or has a bug, or has been having large helpings of fruits and veggies in those few days (which, he had).  If you have found yourself in this position, you have also heard the (seemingly) hollow advice of others (who are not in your shoes) to relax, take a breath, do not stress out.  As difficult as it might seem, or as silly as it sounds coming from the mouth of someone who you (I) feel is unqualified to speak into your situation, it must be done.  You have to find a way to calm down, take a deep breath, and then take a look at where you are and what the next steps should be.  This is going to be a long road, and it will be very challenging at times, but you are not alone.