Day 2 - What to eat?

Again, thank God I ran into my friend at the store! We had some cereal that Bethany could eat, and thankfully she liked it! I dug around in my pantry and looked at all of the labels. One after another, I found things she couldn’t have. Luckily we also had Pirate’s Booty – she can have it! Not much else was in our pantry. Plus, I had a cake recipe to try, with lots of ingredients I didn’t have (tomorrow is her birthday party). It was luckily very similar to her egg-free cake recipe I had used for the past couple of years, but with lots of flour substitutions.

Another friend came over this morning – I was watching her kids while she ran some errands. I asked if I could run to the grocery store later to get the items I needed for her cake. She and I poured over the recipe and ingredients. Then it occurred to me – what about our oil that is in the recipe? Nope, vegetable oil has soy in it. What about the vinegar? (many egg-free recipes use oil & vinegar) The ingredients just said vinegar from grains. What grains? My whole way of thinking had to change. Everything was suspect. I had to call the 1-800 number on the bottle of vinegar to see what it was made out of - luckily it was made from beets so we were good to go!

I went to our local health food store that has tons of organic and vegan and gluten-free items. I was so mentally drained at this point that when a store employee asked me if I needed help – I blanked! I just said, “I don’t know.” She laughed and said, “Um, ok…do you need help finding anything or do you just want to browse?” I said, “Both?” and after an awkward silence I said I would browse for now but ask her if I needed help. I then started my search for these bizarre items on my grocery list…potato starch (NOT potato flour), xantham gum, etc. etc. I briefly looked through other items and found some rice bread & fish sticks made with corn flakes, not wheat. Success!

Well, no. Remember how she is the world’s pickiest eater? The bread was dry, even when toasted. It had a bit of a sour aftertaste, kind of like an alcohol flavor. I didn’t blame her for rejecting that. Not wanting to waste it, I gave it to my 1 year old. She tasted it and promptly fed it to the dog. My friend brought almond butter to try on the bread that she made from scratch at home (remember I mentioned I have the BEST friends?)…um, no go on that one, but it could have been the bread. I also learned rice noodles are not as good reheated, so I tried sprinkling a little salt on them. I accidentally got a ton on one noodle, which I didn’t realize until Bethany was crying with noodle spilling out of her mouth. She was done with those noodles. The fish sticks were a no-go because they were yellow, not brown like her old ones. Lunch was a bust.

Oh, and did I mention she gets low blood sugars? So we have always catered to her picky eating because letting her not eat out of protest is NOT an option…she ends up in a blubbering heap of tears. There have been times I have literally had to make her eat chocolate to get her blood sugar up enough to eat real food. We always have juice on hand. It has definitely added to our struggle with getting her to eat, because you can’t just tell her, “Well if you don’t eat it, you can go hungry.” Unless you really like self-torture in the form of a sobbing child for hours.

I called the pediatrician today, and left a message asking the nurses to pull up her blood tests and wave it under the doctor’s nose. I was worried about celiac disease, and something I read saying she needed to be eating wheat at the time of the test, otherwise you might have a false negative. He didn’t call back until 7:30pm; the poor guy had a busy day! And bless his heart for staying late on a Friday night to call patients back! Alas, we missed the call…so we were now on our own for the weekend to figure things out. I also called the allergist’s office to see if we could move our appointment up. They just about laughed at me – the allergist was booked 2 months out. She just returned from maternity leave and was only working 3 days a week. Good for her! But bad for us – we were just going to have to wait.

Like I said, everything was suspect. She got some birthday presents in the mail – what was in silly putty? What was in the dinosaur egg that you could chisel away at like a fossil? Was I going overboard, or did I really have to worry about these things? How was I going to wait 3 weeks to see the allergist? My husband and I pour over the internet, which we all know is SO full of reliable information! (in case you didn’t notice, that was sarcasm there…)

Add to this all the other daily stressors of being a mom. My one year old learned she can open the toilet lid, and I found her brushing her teeth with toilet water. My house is a mess and I have a birthday party to throw tomorrow. My daughter barely ate today. But you know what? My little girl is back. Her behavior changes are DRASTIC. The low blood sugars were in full-force today, but when I could get her to eat, she was so much happier, talkative, energetic, etc. I will do ANYTHING in the world to keep this little girl!

One day at a time. I can do this.