Sunday, January 17, 2010

More pictures to share!


Gabe and Mommy at the Indianapolis Zoo...last warm day of Fall.  :)




 
 Gabe at Turkey Run State Park...family Canoe Trip!




 
 My pumpkin at the pumpkin patch.  :)




 

 Gabey with Santa Claus when we went to pick out our Tree.





 Gabe and Mike canoeing  :)





                                          Gabe and I at the State Fair...this ride was HORRIBLE!




                                                                    Monkey Gabe!





                                                          Love him so much!






                                                      Floatin' down the Creek.  :)

Epsom Salts = Greatest gift ever created on Earth!!

I LOVE EPSOM SALTS!!!!!!

They are probably my most treasured item that I buy from Wal-Mart right now. Even over the few snack items that I buy to eat when Gabe goes to bed at night.  ;)

I will explain why I love them so much. We have randomly been giving Gabe E.S baths for well over a year now and they use to wind him down for bed well, but never made a difference on how long he slept at night. Well, since we started the SC Diet, Gabe has been having a LOT of sleep issues. Staying asleep ,even with his clonodine, was never happening for him. He would wake up at all times of the night and once he is awake he usually won't go back to sleep at all. We gave him ES baths the first week or so of the diet about every other night and he was sleeping amazingly well like 9 or 10 hrs a night. Gabe has really been in to taking showers lately and so we started just letting him take a shower every night instead of a bath. We totally missed the connection of why he all the sudden stopped sleeping well....the epsom salts! Duh!! So, Thursday night we started giving him ES baths again and BAM! He is sleeping at least 9 hours a night with NO problems. It was really taking a toll on him not getting quality sleep that he was so accustomed to before and also on us too! I think this week at school will be SO much better for him!

We are also going to order Super Pro Bio (Kirkman), Threelac and S Boularddi again to go after the yeast. I don't think the diet is quite enough to kill it on it's own. He needs the extra probiotic help!  He is also on Nystatin currently. I think with all of that he should be in pretty good shape. Then hopefully we will start to see some benefit from all of this hard work we are doing for SCD! Right now, it's a little discouraging for us I must admit.  It's so frustrating to do all of this and not see any differences in Gabe. Well, aside from the fact that he is pooping at least once a day, if not 2 or 3 times. Before SCD, he had severe constipation issues and would go 2 or 3 days without pooping if we didn't give him milk of magnesia.

On a happier note, here are some newer pics of the Fam.    :)





Mike, Gabe, and I on Christmas Day.  :)

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Starting to branch out.....

We have decided to branch out and add a few new things in to Gabe's diet. He has been SCD now for over a month, so I think it's safe to add some new foods. I think we may be giving him too much meat in his diet. Dr. H said that sometimes our kiddos have trouble digesting proteins. (UGH!) If it isn't one thing, it's another. I swear!  :(  I'm really hoping that isn't the case for Gabe since that is his main food source on this diet. He isn't a real big veggie eater yet, although he is eating WAY more foods than he ever was this time last year. We are working on adding in new veggies.

I am going to make his monster cookies tonight, but this time I am going to add in some cashew butter to see how they turn out. Maybe that will spice them up a little bit more for something new and different! I feel so bad for Gabe because he seems to be getting really sick of eating the same foods. Strange that he use to ONLY eat the same 5 foods every day all day long and nothing else and now he gets tired of it once he realizes how great variety is! lol

I will try to post some pictures of how they turn out! I am waiting for cookie monster to fall asleep before I start baking!    :)

 

Saturday, January 2, 2010

4 weeks on SCD :)

As of tomorrow, Gabe has been on the SC Diet for a whole month. Time flies when you're having fun, so they say.   ;)

We are really starting to get in to a routine with everything and it is definitely getting MUCH easier. It is still very time consuming compared to GFCF, but that is just because you are constantly making something from scratch and there are only so many hours in the day. It's been nice that Mike and I have both been home off work the past two weeks and Gabe has been out of school for break. We even ventured out of town to visit Mike's family in Cincinatti for two days. Getting brave aren't we? lol

We still haven't been seeing much progress other than the improved bowels that I mentioned last time. No need to go in to detail on that again.  I will spare you.  ;) We realized two days ago that we were using Sea Salt that was Iodinized and had a bunch of added illegal stuff (dextrose, Silicon Dioxide, etc.). We didn't even think to check sea salt for added sugar. We definitely will be checking everything more closely from now on.

We also got a HUGE lucky break by getting in to a local DAN doctor who is wonderful. She usually has a 9-12 month wait, but since we have already been seeing one of her colleagues she got us in the very next day for a consult. It was so our lucky day or something. Her name is Dr. Mary Lou Hullsman. She recovered her daughter from autism a few years ago and has personally done the SCD diet for her family. We really like our current DAN dr., but his son is only 3 and they haven't tried SCD yet due to food issues. So, speaking with Dr. Hullsman was awesome since she could really relate to our questions specifically about the diet. She also noticed that Gabe's pupils were dialated and that is usually a symptom of adrenal fatigue. We bought a supplement from her office that helps with AF called Cytosyme-AD. Hopefully that is a big key to helping Gabe. We'll see I guess. She also said that we need to resume all of Gabe's probiotics that we previously had him on before starting SCD. We thought we needed to remove them since they weren't SCD legal, but she said that he really seems to need them to kill of the yeast. The diet alone isn't really getting rid of it as fast as we need it to. She thinks that if we do that we will really start to see great benefits from the combination of the diet and probiotics. We had him on ThreeLac, S Boulardii, Pro-bio Gold and Nystatin to fight yeast before and now he is only on Pro-Bio Inulin Free. It was really nice to hear that the supplements won't affect the diet enough to have to stop taking them. Gabe is clearly a kid who needs probiotics to fight bacteria off. It's funny how having a fresh set of eyes and ears can help you that much. We were really, really happy to have gotten the chance to meet with her. I would really recommend always getting a second opinion every so often from another DAN dr. if you can. I know we will in the future!

I will keep updating on our progress as much as possible. Hopefully I will have more exciting things to post soon with our new plans.  :)

Friday, January 1, 2010

SCD Pizza ~ John's Recipe #2

Tonight I decided to branch out and try a new recipe for Gabe. He seems to be getting tired of eating plain meats now. We figured we wouldn't try too many new foods until we got his yeast under control better, but I can't blame him for getting sick of pork chops, steaks, and chicken breasts. lol

Here is the pizza recipe we tried and a picture of how it turned out. The picture is only half of the original pizza as Gabe was already busy eating it. haha He ate the whole pizza in one sitting, so I think next time I will double the ingredients and have some left-overs for another meal.

-1/2 cup almond flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil

- 1 egg
- italian spices (oregano, basil, pepper, garlic, onion, etc.) 

Mix all ingredients together and add more flour to mix until mixture forms a dough ball.  Grease pizza pan with olive oil and spread dough out in pan. Don't worry if the pizza doesn't fill the whole pan. Preheat oven to 350 and throw pizza in while the oven is preheating. This will set up the crust and once the oven has pre-heated the crust should be golden brown and ready for the toppings to be added.
Add toppings and bake at 350 for 10 minutes.

**We used homemade pizza sauce (tomato paste, water, italian spices & salt) and I fried up some hamburger meat. We don't use any dairy products yet, but they do recommend Havarti cheese on top if you want or fresh veggies. Gabe loved it, we hope you will too!  :)

Here's a picture....


Deanna's Midas Gold Pancake/Waffle Recipe ~ SCD

 For breakfast we have been making Gabe waffles, Pancakes, or Sausage patties. He, of course, prefers the waffles or pancakes.  :)   I thought I would post the recipe we use (which he loves) that is so user-friendly and quick! We make Gabe a honey syrup by mixing a little bit of spectrum shortening with the honey and microwaving it for a few seconds. It makes the honey a little less over-powering I think.



MIDAS GOLD PANCAKES/OR WAFFLES
by Deanna

1 cup almond flour
4 eggs
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda

Beat eggs in a mixing bowl with a large whisk. Add honey and vanilla and beat until smooth. Add almond flour, salt and baking soda and mix well with whisk.
Pour in hot waffle iron and cook according to waffle iron instructions or cook like pancakes.


Here is a picture of the one's Mike made this morning.....