Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Friday, August 22, 2014
Hey Friday
Ok, I admit Friday really has no significance to me since I'm home on maternity leave; but everyone always does Friday posts and I wanted to link up too!
I am in love with these Alex and Ani bangles. I just learned what they were (probably really late on that one but remember home with a baby isolated from the world). I have been checking out their website and definitely will be putting a few on my Christmas list as well as dropping hints along the way. It looks like we have two stores fairly local that sell them too so I shouldn't have to order online.
I had my second third fiftieth follow up allergy testing on Tuesday. This was to test after my reaction I had at my moms six weeks ago. Turns out it was not cross contamination after all and I actually have something called Oral Allergy Syndrome. Yay me.... So not really. Now I can add raspberries, blueberries and blackberries to my list of things I can not eat, but wait because I only have to avoid them if they are not cooked apparently. I guess this syndrome is not the same type of allergy and should only be oral symptoms and not lead to anaphylaxis and when the food is cooked the proteins break down and you don't react. I still have no intention of eating them cooked or not.
Check out some more blogs linking up here:
ONE
TWO
THREE
Mav had his final soccer practice and received his medal for participation. He was so excited and he likes to wear it around the house whenever he can get his hands on it. I am not sure yet what we will do with it but obviously being his first medal ever it is something we will keep forever.
FOUR
Ty has had some crazy bed head hair going on most of the week. It is ridiculously cute. Part of me hopes it is a sign of what is to come with his hair, Mav has such flat hair that it would be fun for Ty to be a little out of control.
FIVE
Mav continues to be a handful these days but we still are managing to get a few cute moments in between the chaos. This morning he was super excited to see a cement truck across the street so hubby took him out on the front step to watch. The rest of the day was not so sweet so I'm glad I caught the moment.
Happy Weekend!
Check out some more blogs linking up here:
Monday, August 11, 2014
Mary had a little lamb... and it was delicious! FPIES update
Ty is 9 months old this week so I thought it was a good time to post a FPIES update. That and the fact that we have recently added a meat to his menu!
Yup that's right, Lamb has been added to the menu. I'm pretty happy and relieved that our first meat was a safe one, I am hesitant to trial the chicken and turkey like the specialist wants. As I mentioned recently we saw the specialist in July and were given a list of suggestions that included lamb, chicken, turkey and carrots. In addition to the foods we also discussed trying a soy based formula to give us a fall back not only in the event of emergencies, but also just to be able to get out of the house say for a date with the hubby. Ty nurses so often I have not had any luck with pumping. My supply is most definitely not the same as it was with Mav.
So we started with the soy formula and things were looking great. That is until I realized that he had developed a rash. It was mostly on his torso, little pink and flesh tone bumps that were raised and could be felt with your hand.
They almost looked like little zits. I kept an eye on them and watched for other symptoms but there was nothing else. Eventually on day 9 of the trial (four days on, 2 day break and 3 more days on) I called the doctor and he suggested I stop until it cleared just to be safe. Total downer. I was so upset at the idea of losing the formula that was looking so promising. Ty has only had acute reactions so far, I was a bit naïve about the possibility of a chronic reaction. Our doctor also had said he didn't fully believe chronic reactions were really FPIES but obviously he believes enough that he had us stop.
After waiting over a week for the rash to clear without any improvements hubby revealed he had been washing Ty's clothes with the regular detergent. My spirits were lifted and after rewashing all his clothes we are now rash free. I'm very nervous to bring back the soy but also feeling very optimistic that the rash was not FPIES related. Fingers crossed!
Because of the rash we lost some valuable trial days, but went ahead and started lamb even though the rash was still present. At first Ty did not seem able to tolerate the texture of the meat and I instantly began trying to come up with a back up protein plan that did not include meat. However I discovered after the lamb cubes thaw they will turn into a pate like paste so long as I add water when heating it up. Once I realized this the rest of the trial was smooth sailing. We mix it with squash, sweet potatoes or peaches to hide the gamey taste.
The one downside of the lamb I have noticed is that it makes the poor guy constipated. We have had to start giving him prune juice on occasion (luckily he had prune juice prior to his reactions so I felt ok without doing a trial).
Today we started quinoa. I had a bag of it in the pantry that was still good and figured out how to grind it into a flour and make my own baby cereal. I am a little extra nervous since Mav is on holidays from daycare this week but I don't feel like we can afford to not trial this week so here we go. Quinoa seems to have a high pass rate in the fpies community, and if we pass it then it will offer us a lot of versatility as well as the high nutritional value of it.
I am thinking of changing up how we do our trials, we never were given an outline of what we should be doing and I sort of just decided the time frame and break period based on what others were doing in the support groups I am in. I recently noticed someone mention they did 5 days of one food followed by a 5 day break where they introduced another and then went back to the first food for another 5. It got me thinking and I am going to try doing it but in 4 day groupings. If we find Ty has a chronic reaction to something we obviously will have to go back to the other way of doing it but this way should allow us to conquer more foods in the limited weeks I have left before returning to work.
So in summary we are on day 1 of quinoa and will trial that for the next four days; during our four day break I am going to introduce pears. After pears we will try carrots and retry the soy formula. Depending how the timing works out we may get a chance to try one of the other meats before our next appointment, but I am also not worried about rushing into them. Avocado is also near the top of the list for upcoming trials.
Our current safes include:
Lamb, Sweet potato, Butternut squash, peaches and black plums
Current triggers:
Dairy, Oats, Rice
Unknowns:
Soy, and Quinoa
It feels good to see that written out and have a reminder that our safe list is almost doubled our amount of triggers. It gives me hope, we can do this.
Yup that's right, Lamb has been added to the menu. I'm pretty happy and relieved that our first meat was a safe one, I am hesitant to trial the chicken and turkey like the specialist wants. As I mentioned recently we saw the specialist in July and were given a list of suggestions that included lamb, chicken, turkey and carrots. In addition to the foods we also discussed trying a soy based formula to give us a fall back not only in the event of emergencies, but also just to be able to get out of the house say for a date with the hubby. Ty nurses so often I have not had any luck with pumping. My supply is most definitely not the same as it was with Mav.
So we started with the soy formula and things were looking great. That is until I realized that he had developed a rash. It was mostly on his torso, little pink and flesh tone bumps that were raised and could be felt with your hand.
After waiting over a week for the rash to clear without any improvements hubby revealed he had been washing Ty's clothes with the regular detergent. My spirits were lifted and after rewashing all his clothes we are now rash free. I'm very nervous to bring back the soy but also feeling very optimistic that the rash was not FPIES related. Fingers crossed!
Because of the rash we lost some valuable trial days, but went ahead and started lamb even though the rash was still present. At first Ty did not seem able to tolerate the texture of the meat and I instantly began trying to come up with a back up protein plan that did not include meat. However I discovered after the lamb cubes thaw they will turn into a pate like paste so long as I add water when heating it up. Once I realized this the rest of the trial was smooth sailing. We mix it with squash, sweet potatoes or peaches to hide the gamey taste.
so good he's licking the plate clean lol
Today we started quinoa. I had a bag of it in the pantry that was still good and figured out how to grind it into a flour and make my own baby cereal. I am a little extra nervous since Mav is on holidays from daycare this week but I don't feel like we can afford to not trial this week so here we go. Quinoa seems to have a high pass rate in the fpies community, and if we pass it then it will offer us a lot of versatility as well as the high nutritional value of it.
I am thinking of changing up how we do our trials, we never were given an outline of what we should be doing and I sort of just decided the time frame and break period based on what others were doing in the support groups I am in. I recently noticed someone mention they did 5 days of one food followed by a 5 day break where they introduced another and then went back to the first food for another 5. It got me thinking and I am going to try doing it but in 4 day groupings. If we find Ty has a chronic reaction to something we obviously will have to go back to the other way of doing it but this way should allow us to conquer more foods in the limited weeks I have left before returning to work.
So in summary we are on day 1 of quinoa and will trial that for the next four days; during our four day break I am going to introduce pears. After pears we will try carrots and retry the soy formula. Depending how the timing works out we may get a chance to try one of the other meats before our next appointment, but I am also not worried about rushing into them. Avocado is also near the top of the list for upcoming trials.
Our current safes include:
Lamb, Sweet potato, Butternut squash, peaches and black plums
Current triggers:
Dairy, Oats, Rice
Unknowns:
Soy, and Quinoa
It feels good to see that written out and have a reminder that our safe list is almost doubled our amount of triggers. It gives me hope, we can do this.
Friday, August 8, 2014
Good bye carpet!
Flooring installation is currently underway! Can't wait to see it!!
Mav enjoyed his outdoor lunch, it took some convincing to get him into the "baby chair" lol
Our morning was spent outside and now that they are in the final stretch we are trapped upstairs. Luckily it's nap time
Before and after pictures next week!
We have the family picnic/reunion this weekend so should be fairly busy.
Hope everyone has a great weekend :)
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Oh Hey August!
Wow. I can hardly believe it is August already and summer is almost over!
The weather here lately has been a mixture of summer and fall already. I love it.
I love fall, but lately this mixture has been a perfect combination with cool mornings and evenings yet warming up for summer fun mid day.
I have a plan for August. So much has been going on lately, and so much is coming up but when life gets busy I tend to think more about my blog posts than actually write them...
So this month I am going to aim to be on here every day. Not writing every day, unless of course I feel like it but being on here. Reading posts and commenting. I've been slacking all around lately and I have some new blogs I'm following and bookmarked that I want to catch up on.
So let's play catch up with July shall we?
I took the boys to my moms for a few days, the trip went better than expected but of course I could have used another holiday afterwards. My mom is great with the boys but I was still flying solo at night time and sleeping in a strange bed so I was pretty exhausted. We spent every day swimming either at my Aunt's pool or the beach, Mav got an up close and personal tour at the OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) station where my mom works out of. One of the officers gave him a little badge and hat to take home and let him climb in a car.
Both kids love the beach :)
My brother was visiting at the same time as us and let Mav sit on his motorcycle. Kid was obsessed and pretty much worships him now!
Officer MV reporting for work! Gonna go catch some bad guys!
Ty had his first appointment with his FPIES specialist. I feel pretty good about the doctor who is a pediatric GI. He has great bedside manor, speaks to you as an equal and his outlook on trials is great. Sort of we never know unless we try kind of attitude. He has been working with FPIES for thirty years I think he said, and he runs a clinic which we will be attending on a regular basis. Our next appointment is in September, in the meantime we are supposed to trial lamb, chicken, in hopes of gaining a protein source and carrots. I assume the carrots will be an easy pass just because we have done well with veggies so far, I will probably wait a bit to try them tho because Ty's menu is very orange right now. We tried lamb for the first time yesterday and will again today. I'm not sure if we will continue because he is having a hard time with the texture, makes sense since despite his age he really isn't eating much foods yet. I'm thinking of going rogue and trying avocado and maybe some quinoa for protein instead.
Enjoying some plums :)
Oh and we did try a soy based formula for supplementing but despite Ty not having an acute reaction like his other triggers we had to stop it. He developed a rash which may have been unrelated or coincidence but to be safe we will re try it later just in case it is a sign of a chronic fail. **update since starting this post I have found out hubby has used regular detergent with Ty's clothing, the rash may be from laundry so fingers crossed we rewash and it goes away!
On the topic of FPIES; we have decided that Mav also had FPIES but was lucky enough to have one if not two triggers. I spoke with the specialist about his previous banana reactions and he suggested we try again. I was very hesitant, for one Mav is older and a reaction would be more upsetting for him, but a reaction would also mean an official diagnosis. On a whim I bought a few bananas while at the grocery store and we went for it... and he passed! He was sooo happy! The first day I peeled the banana without him seeing it and gave him half, I didn't want him to see it and react and then think he could eat bananas. He's been so good at knowing not to eat them. Day two I went ahead and gave him a banana, skins at all. His little face lit right up and he excitedly exclaimed "me eat?!" "me eat nanna mama?" " me monkey now!!"
My monkey watching cartoons and snacking on his newest treat!
Seriously cutest thing ever. He isn't crazy about the texture so he wont eat the whole thing but he's happy and I no longer have to worry about him accidently eating one.
Oh I know there was more about July but that's the other thing that happens, you forget!
So onto August... probably the most exciting thing to be happening here (and very soon if goes as planned) is the removal of the nasty carpets on the main floor! I wrote a very informative email to our property manager about Tys allergies and they agreed to replace it with plank flooring. I was so estatic when I read that approval email that I was on the verge of shouting, crying and dancing all at once. I honestly cant wait until we buy our own place but at least in the meantime we can have better looking floors! Before and after photos to come!
We also have hubby's family picnic to look forward to. Sort of a mini reunion sort of thing, typically there would have been a very large gathering of Italian for a two day bocce tournament and feast but this year things are a little more low key. That is happening next weekend so we will be pretty busy and have a houseful of guests. Both hubby's brothers and their spouses are staying with us. unfortunately his sister and her family are unable to attend. I'm pretty disappointed I was hoping for some nephew snuggles.
Hubby's birthday is also coming. That won't be too exciting lol but may as well mention it.
And of course we will just be enjoying the rest of the summer.
This post has taken me multiple days to write and attach photos. See this is why nothing ever gets posted. My life is chaos ;)
until next time!
The weather here lately has been a mixture of summer and fall already. I love it.
I love fall, but lately this mixture has been a perfect combination with cool mornings and evenings yet warming up for summer fun mid day.
I have a plan for August. So much has been going on lately, and so much is coming up but when life gets busy I tend to think more about my blog posts than actually write them...
So this month I am going to aim to be on here every day. Not writing every day, unless of course I feel like it but being on here. Reading posts and commenting. I've been slacking all around lately and I have some new blogs I'm following and bookmarked that I want to catch up on.
So let's play catch up with July shall we?
I took the boys to my moms for a few days, the trip went better than expected but of course I could have used another holiday afterwards. My mom is great with the boys but I was still flying solo at night time and sleeping in a strange bed so I was pretty exhausted. We spent every day swimming either at my Aunt's pool or the beach, Mav got an up close and personal tour at the OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) station where my mom works out of. One of the officers gave him a little badge and hat to take home and let him climb in a car.
Ty had his first appointment with his FPIES specialist. I feel pretty good about the doctor who is a pediatric GI. He has great bedside manor, speaks to you as an equal and his outlook on trials is great. Sort of we never know unless we try kind of attitude. He has been working with FPIES for thirty years I think he said, and he runs a clinic which we will be attending on a regular basis. Our next appointment is in September, in the meantime we are supposed to trial lamb, chicken, in hopes of gaining a protein source and carrots. I assume the carrots will be an easy pass just because we have done well with veggies so far, I will probably wait a bit to try them tho because Ty's menu is very orange right now. We tried lamb for the first time yesterday and will again today. I'm not sure if we will continue because he is having a hard time with the texture, makes sense since despite his age he really isn't eating much foods yet. I'm thinking of going rogue and trying avocado and maybe some quinoa for protein instead.
Oh and we did try a soy based formula for supplementing but despite Ty not having an acute reaction like his other triggers we had to stop it. He developed a rash which may have been unrelated or coincidence but to be safe we will re try it later just in case it is a sign of a chronic fail. **update since starting this post I have found out hubby has used regular detergent with Ty's clothing, the rash may be from laundry so fingers crossed we rewash and it goes away!
On the topic of FPIES; we have decided that Mav also had FPIES but was lucky enough to have one if not two triggers. I spoke with the specialist about his previous banana reactions and he suggested we try again. I was very hesitant, for one Mav is older and a reaction would be more upsetting for him, but a reaction would also mean an official diagnosis. On a whim I bought a few bananas while at the grocery store and we went for it... and he passed! He was sooo happy! The first day I peeled the banana without him seeing it and gave him half, I didn't want him to see it and react and then think he could eat bananas. He's been so good at knowing not to eat them. Day two I went ahead and gave him a banana, skins at all. His little face lit right up and he excitedly exclaimed "me eat?!" "me eat nanna mama?" " me monkey now!!"
Seriously cutest thing ever. He isn't crazy about the texture so he wont eat the whole thing but he's happy and I no longer have to worry about him accidently eating one.
Oh I know there was more about July but that's the other thing that happens, you forget!
So onto August... probably the most exciting thing to be happening here (and very soon if goes as planned) is the removal of the nasty carpets on the main floor! I wrote a very informative email to our property manager about Tys allergies and they agreed to replace it with plank flooring. I was so estatic when I read that approval email that I was on the verge of shouting, crying and dancing all at once. I honestly cant wait until we buy our own place but at least in the meantime we can have better looking floors! Before and after photos to come!
We also have hubby's family picnic to look forward to. Sort of a mini reunion sort of thing, typically there would have been a very large gathering of Italian for a two day bocce tournament and feast but this year things are a little more low key. That is happening next weekend so we will be pretty busy and have a houseful of guests. Both hubby's brothers and their spouses are staying with us. unfortunately his sister and her family are unable to attend. I'm pretty disappointed I was hoping for some nephew snuggles.
Hubby's birthday is also coming. That won't be too exciting lol but may as well mention it.
And of course we will just be enjoying the rest of the summer.
This post has taken me multiple days to write and attach photos. See this is why nothing ever gets posted. My life is chaos ;)
until next time!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)