A little background, please

Monday, January 11, 2010
Thanks to everyone for the massive influx of emails and phone calls. I've been posting on blogs and boards about E's issues for so long that I completely forgot that I'd never really talked about it on here. In a nutshell, E's got digestive issues. We don't know the root cause, but we've finally stopped listening to our pediatrician's* reassurance that it's nothing and he'll eventually outgrow it and we're currently seeing an allergist/acupuncturist and we have an appointment at Children's Hospital on the 20th.

Coincidentally, E also has his first ear infections and pink eye in both eyes, so if you called about that, thanks as well. Yes, we took him to the doctor and no, I am not giving him the antibiotics he prescribed. That's fodder for another post, which I'll probably start spewing as soon as this one is done considering how worked up about it I still am.

Back to the stomach issues...the allergist suspects a yeast overgrowth and so we're on the elimination diet. E tested positive for a bunch of food allergies (gluten and dairy were at the top) but the allergist said that often because gluten and dairy are so tough to digest that if your GI system is out of whack, it'll seem like you have allergies to those things when in fact you'd be able to tolerate them if things were running smoothly. And she said that people who crave sugar, which in E's case was fruit fruit gimme fruit, crave it because it feeds the yeast, which in turn grows and demands more sugar. The past week has been really hard but we're learning and managing and today we got to reintroduce blueberries in small amounts, so that was very exciting since they are E's #1 favorite food.

For those of you who want more details, E has had silent reflux since birth. He was also way sensitive to dairy in breast milk and has had about a dozen "normal" poops in his entire life. They're usually really explosive and soft and messy and stinky. He has gas that can clear a room and his breath used to smell really bad, but has improved lately. Also, he's always been in the 5-10 percentile for growth, which is fine...unless it's not. There's more, but I can't think right now, sleep deprivation being what it is.

*If anyone in the Denver metro area has a pediatrician they love and respect, please email me. I think we're finally done with ours. Love the guy, would probably be friends with him in real life, but enough is enough.

1 comments to A little background, please:

Unknown said...

Hey Nanette,

Sorry to hear about E's struggles...I can only imagine how tough that must be.

FWIW we were "anti" antibiotics as well but over the XMAS Holidays Stella got a pretty bad ear infection (can you say "b!tch on wheels"...LOL).

Anyway, the anti-biotics worked like a charm, so in moderate (ie once in Stella's life) I think that they were fine.

On a related note, no one in our family got any kind of flu shot.

Post a Comment