Some new pics to share!

Gabe camping with Gramma <3









Look at the great buy we found at Meijer for $20!!
hehe.....awwww!








Gabe and our new puppy, Brady.
Gabe's new best friend!

A Saint Louis Set-back.....

We have family who live in Saint Louis, MO so we decided to head out that way for a short weekend trip last weekend. This was really my first "trip" on the diet with Gabe. To make matters worse, Mike wasn't going along to help me. Yikes, I know! I luckily asked my mom to go with me and she gladly accepted. It took me two whole days pretty much to get all Gabe's meals prepared and ready to go. I thought I had it pretty well covered. Boy was I wrong!

We got to Saint Louis and met our family at a little farm restaurant called "Eckert's" and were planning to have lunch. I asked the waitress if she could make Gabe a PLAIN hamburger patty with clean utensils and no seasonings. She said yes that would be no problem and the rest of my family got a buffet style Fried chicken dinner. My aunt, who loves Gabe very much but isn't use to the diet yet, thought it would be ok to give him a piece of fried chicken without checking with me first. After he had already chewed and swallowed it, she asked if he could have a piece and when I freaked out and said no she told me that she had already given him one piece. Oh My Gosh..... I was scared/upset/sick/worried/etc. Everyone seemed to think I was over-reacting a lot about it I think, but it's hard when you work SO HARD to do this diet and then one little thing sets you back. It's really frustrating to Mike and I and we aren't sure how sensitive Gabe really is to things just yet. Has anyone else experienced anything like this? I was so upset. Needless to say, Gabe was fine that day and the next but right when we got home we noticed that his stool completely changed again (it had been the best it's ever been before we left!) and he has been acting crazy again. He is super hyper, pooping a lot, not talking as much, a lot less eye contact, he is playing with toys very inapropriately again, his yelling and stimming are worse than they have been for months....etc. It is soooooo dissapointing, but I guess it really has shown us that the diet WORKS for Gabe. So that is a light in this darkness! Now if only I could know how long this set back will last. I read in Jenny McCarthy's new book that Dr. Kartzinel's son could eat a crouton sized piece of gluten or casein and have a 2 week set back. That seems crazy to me, so I really hope that isn't the case for every kid! Speaking of which, that book is really good so far! If only I had more time to sit and read it. he he

From this experience, we have learned that we can no longer trust going out to eat. We are going to stay in from now on at least for a while. It won't be too hard to do as we have been staying in about 90% of the time we have been on Gabe's new diet anyways. I just think that the risk is too high for cross-contamination in restaurants, no matter how careful the people are. It isn't fair to risk Gabe's health just to go get a fancy dinner that we could make cheaper at home anyways. Lazy me! :)

I hope everyone has a great Father's Day!

Peanuts!!!!!

It has been such a crazy three weeks for us here. Wow!
Gabe was so extremely sick. We saw 4 doctors before getting in to his DAN! doctor (the only one who actually didn't blow us off) and found out that Gabe has a peanut allergy! It started almost three weeks ago when Gabe woke up and got sick in bed with vm + diarrhea. Never a good start to the day! I assumed that morning that he had caught something from the dirty gym playroom that he goes to every evening with Dad until it went on for about 3 days and wasn't getting better. We saw an MD and an ER doctor, got x-rays of his tummy, urine and stool cultures, etc. All negative and looked fine. Now, being that I am his mom, I knew that it wasn't this "crazy stomach bug" that these docs were passing it off as. Mommy knows best...always! I may have been ok with the tummy bug theory if Gabe had other symptoms commonly known to accompany vm+dr like *fever*, chills, body aches, *fatigue*, etc. He only had vomiting sporatically in the night time or early mornings and had bright neon yellow stools allllll dayyyyyy. We went through a whole perscription of nausea meds and a whole bottle of Immoduim to no prevail. Deep down I knew that it had something to do with his new diet, but I just couldn't figure out what. None of the docs seemed to think it sounded like a food allergy. I even googled and asked around to see if anyone else had these issues when going gfcf. No one seemed to know anything or had anything so severe happen. So, I waited to see if this "flu bug" would go away on it's own. Almost 7 days later it was still happening. After a 2 day no vomiting streak (we were elated)Mike gave Gabe a PB&J that night before bed and Gabe ended up getting very sick that next morning. Mike asked me if I thought it could be the peanut butter bothering him and I quickly said,"well, he's been eating pb his whole life, so why would it affect him now?" We dismissed the idea and we finally got in to his DAN! doctor who asked us if we were feeding him anything new or different. We then told him that we had questioned the pb and he said that it was highly likely that his peanut allergy was always being masked by the gluten built-up in his intestines. Since he was so clogged up his whole life it never caused a problem until we removed the gluten and casein. Isn't that strange? We weren't %100 sure, but were willing to do ANYTHING to get him to stop vomiting every morning and pooping terrible yellow colors! We have now been gluten, casein, dairy, yeast, and nut-free for 6 days now and I am extremely happy to say that Gabe has not vomited at all! It must be the peanuts. We also found out just yesterday that we think Gabe can't process soy well either. Mike's mom heard about Gabe's nut allergy and went out and bought a soy-based peanut butter for Gabe. She made him some "peanut butter fudge" with the soy butter and he LOVED it. We had a wedding to attend yesterday evening, so Mike's mom kept Gabe for us. Turns out he had terrible bowels all evening after eating the soy based pbutter fudge. We told her to stop giving it to him and he is back to normal bowels again today. So, now we have yet another allergy to avoid. LOL - I have to laugh, otherwise I may cry. :)

I just cannot wait to see how well Gabe does now that we have removed (hopefully) all problem foods! I cannot imagine how terribly miserable he must have been this whole time I've been feeding him these foods that hurt him. :( He just sat there in silence and pain. I always wondered why he hated eating and only ate small amounts periodically. If he ate, he hurt. If he didn't eat, he hurt. :( Makes me soooooooooo sad to imagine. I will never, ever let that happen to him again. This is why I want to be able to write these blogs in hopes that someone who hasn't tried the diet will read about our story and at least give it a shot. Even if your child doesn't miraculously heal from it like some kids do, it will at least help them to have a better quality of life! That is all I want for Gabe, the BEST life possible! I will never give up hope!

I found a quote the other day that I LOVE. Not sure who said it....but it was directed towards Pharma companies! Love it. :)

"You may have silenced my child, but you will never silence me!"