Random MomBlog

I’ve seen a number of variations on Fish Oil versus Flax Seed Oil, and I think the most best answer is to use whichever one (or neither, or algae) suits you best. However, looking at this metabolic pathway chart, I agree that

fish oil is a superior source of omega-3’s since it is already in an active form upon ingestion.

In fact, that metabolic chart explains both of these “contradictory” results: ALA is the left side with all of the inflammatory agents (hmm, needs COX2 inhibitors), while flax is upper right (fish lower right) with the anti-inflammatory agents.

Cale ate all of his Rice Chex, one of the few ready-made cereals that’s free of all his allergies, so we put it on the shopping list. At the grocery store this morning, we noticed that all of the Chex flavors, except wheat obviously, are now gluten-free! Hurrah for them! Cale and I agree that corn chex has more flavor, too!

I was multi-tasking searching the web for two topics, looking for GFCF recipes and looking for possible causes of Karston’s abdominal pain.

From the GFCF recipe search, I ran across mention of a low oxalate diet (LOD) helping severe pediatric abdominal pain! Interesting! So I went looking for LOD and quickly got to the specific carbohydrate diet (SCD) (with recipes). Those might be worth trying, but it’s so hard to get Karston to eat anything that I shudder to think about trying to get him to eat from an approved list. On the other hand, maybe tracking his diet for oxalates and carbs while tracking how he feels …

I found this doctor, and he’s not that far away either. Hmm, a specialist … wouldn’t be the first one, but we haven’t gotten anywhere yet either.

I suspect either intestinal allergies (sadly, there’s no test for these T-cell-mediated allergies, so you just have to associate symptoms with diet) or colitis. Since Cale was diagnosed with colitis and it can run in the family, I think it needs to be considered for Karston. Unfortunately, it looks like differential diagnosis is a current research topic, explaining why it’s tough to get medical traction.

So, flipping through Pediatric Gastroenterology, I read up on Colitis and Short Stature. We already tested for Celiac Disease although he hadn’t had any wheat that week (should be able test for any wheat in past six weeks, though). I read Cholecystitis, which is interesting since we were worried about possible bilirubin earlier this month (but we think it was artificial color from lollipops). I read Colic, linked to milk protein allergy, and found the differential diagnosis of soy protein intolerance interesting. However, colic weight gain is typical, which doesn’t cover Karston falling off the weight charts at 6 months. I read about Crohn Disease (often considered with colitis) and other Malabsorption Syndromes. Protein Intolerance was interesting: “cow’s milk proteins are most frequently implicated as a cause of food intolerance during infancy,” “only a few of these [intolerances] have a clear allergic immunoglobulin E (IgE)–mediated pathogenesis” and “in children, GI symptoms are generally most common, with a frequency ranging from 50-80%, followed by cutaneous symptoms (20-40%), and respiratory symptoms (4-25%).” Constitutional Growth Delay mentions falling off the growth charts at 3-6 months of age, then resuming growth on the right slope but below the curve. Where have I seen that??? Silver-Russell Syndrome usually starts with low birthweight, which didn’t happen. Oh, and your word of the day is borborygmus: tummy rumbles!; can be caused by “incomplete digestion of carbohydrate-containing foods including milk, gluten, fruits, vegetables, beans, legumes, and high-fiber whole grains.”

I noticed that Cale’s hempmilk says Not for use as an infant formula. I know the true (cynical) reason for that label is that infant formula makers have expensive lawyers and lobbyists to crowd out the competition. But the more I think about it, the more that annoys me. (Rachel Ray is right: who’s going to lobby for broccoli? because they should.) I have a baby who is allergic to milk and soy. Infant formula is either made from milk or from soy. Oh sure, there’s the hypoallergenic hydrolyzed formula for babies with allergies. Guess what? Cale doesn’t like the flavor, and it gives him a lot of painful gas (a mild allergic reaction). So when Cale wants a bottle or ta-ta and I don’t have anything for him, what am I supposed to do? It was the best of serendipity that I learned about hemp milk from another parent at work, a dad who’s proud his twin girls, who outweigh Cale despite being twins to his single status, have never had formula, just breast milk or this hemp milk. If those twins thrived on hemp milk, as they clearly did with their outstanding weight gain to go from premature twins to normal size within the first year, I’m convinced it’s safe for Cale to drink even if it’s <sarcasm>not for use as an infant formula</sarcasm>. No you twerpy lawyers, it’s better, much better, than infant formula (Cale likes the flavor and doesn’t get painful allergic gas from it)! How am I supposed to know these things, to be a good mom to my sweet child who has multiple allergies, when the formula companies have lawyers making sure this vital information is suppressed? *sigh* I’m glad I’ve got something for Cale, but I’m sad that this isn’t widely known. I’m so sorry that other moms in my situation (baby with multiple allergies, including milk and soy) don’t know that there’s an easy answer that’s cheaper and healthier than hydrolyzed infant formula. Shucks, you don’t even have to be avoiding allergies to want to know this! Save money? Healthy alternative? You bet!

I know every use, even one!, of infant formula in the first year* increases the chance of SIDS as compared to a diet of strictly breast milk. Like the campaign says, breast is best. It really is! *Yes, somewhere between 4 and 6 months, babies need pureed food added to their diet too. As long as it’s healthy (not pureed fast food greasy salty swill), baby food isn’t a risk. What I mean is, if it goes in a bottle, formula is not my first choice (breast milk) or my second choice (help milk). Formula’s not even on my list. And I’m generally not the crunchy type if you know what I mean …

I’ve spent years reducing the fat in my diet, yet I’ve knowingly turned a blind eye to cheese. I love cheese, and the only reduced-fat cheese I liked was the Cabot line (not that I tried many, since I left cheese in a favored blind spot). To my surprise, giving up cheese for Cale was EASY! I did it right away.

However, I admit I was pretty happy, especially after a hideous soy cheese attempt (had to throw the whole expensive chunk away even before we knew Cale was allergic to soy because it reeked too badly to eat), to find a cheese substitute that doesn’t taste like it should be used as punishment. The answer is vegan-rella tastes somewhat like cheese, and does just fine for melting and flavor on a homemade pizza. And it’s rice-based, so it’s allergy-friendly.

When I discovered that Cale was very allergic to me eating dairy, milk products were out of my diet in a snap. He was uncomfortable after I had several veggie burgers (lunch and dinner, not all at once) in one day, so soy went out. Uncomfortable after I had a big tasty omelet for dinner, so eggs went out. The organic baby food with barley flour didn’t sit well with him, so barley went out. I’ve been pretty ruthless so far for removing suspect foods. Even beans. If I have a small serving of beans, we’re OK, but making a meal of beans doesn’t work for Cale so I don’t do it anymore.

Which leads me around to oats. Cale was uncomfortable after he had baby food with oat flour last week, and I caught myself rationalizing, saying that it must be the cold that he caught. It could be, but that doesn’t mean I’m not also being softer on oats than I was on other food stuffs. With all of the items I’ve removed from my diet, I have become aware that I really enjoy oats, especially in cookies. A handful of oats in bread gives it an enjoyable chewiness. I like oats. I thought my blind spot was cheese, but it might actually be cheese. Once Cale is well, he’s going to have to take another oats challenge. I don’t want to drop oats from my diet after having dropped so much else!

I used to believe the old saw that the only thing that matters for weight issues is to watch calories in (food) and calories out (exercise). Up to a point, that’s even true. This is The Physics Diet, and it works if you’re strict. I’ll cut to the end game: clearly the source of the calories matters, at least in some cases. Don’t believe me? Diabetes. Check mate in one word!

To work on the “calories in” side, I developed all sorts of low-fat cooking techniques years ago. I’m pretty good at it now. The reason why I learned low-fat is that you get 9 calories from a gram of fat, while just 4 calories from a gram of protein or a gram of carbohydrate. Obviously knocking out fat is a bigger calorie drop than protein or carbs. [The building blocks of protein are amino acids; the building blocks of carbohydrates are sugars.]

Too bad I’m sensitive to refined sugar! Not that it’s bad to be a low-fat cook, but it’s not all I need to watch. What I’ve learned from observing myself is that eating refined sugar (certain types more so than others; haven’t figured out what those have in common yet though) triggers munchies. I’m sure I’m still hungry. I mean, I feel quite hungry. I can tell it’s a hungry feeling, and not boredom or any of those other wrong reasons to eat. Luckily, I’ve learned the “reset” button for the refined sugar munchies, and that’s to fight back with unrefined sugar. The sweetness of fruit is appealing, and it (generally) turns off my desire to eat more. Apples are great! So it’s not that the calories in sugar are bad, but my reaction to them (wanting to eat more) is. Complex carbohydrates are good (especially the ones high in fiber), but refined carbs and especially refined sugars are not good for how I respond to them.

I’ve still got more to learn here, but I’ll start by acknowledging that not all calories are equal; some calorie sources have undesirable consequences.

I think Daddy hit on something yesterday when he said Cale eats every 2 hours. Cale does that at night too. Well, mostly. His longest sleep is the first round, and that’s when we feed him baby food before I nurse him to sleep (two kinds of food, and sometimes he sleeps 4 hours). Then on the better nights, he cries about every 2 hours, and I can nurse him back to sleep in 30 minutes (so I can sleep almost 1:30 out of every 2 hours). On bad nights, it’s an hour to get him asleep, and he sometimes wakes the second he touches his crib.

I’m going to ponder better ways to fill his tummy. Although he usually has gas (often enough silent, and I feel it when my hand is on his butt, makes me suspect that he might have gas when my hand isn’t there) when he wakes up. Hmm. So I need to reduce his gas and increase how much is in his tummy, and then I can sleep again. Hmm. Hoping for ideas to jump into my sleep-deprived brain.

Family trip to the beach this weekend! My mother, my husband, and both of my sons piled in our station wagon and headed to the coast Thursday morning. I left work a little early on Friday and drove my mother’s car down to join them, and then my mother drove her car home Saturday just in time for her to go to work this weekend.

Reflections on this trip … I didn’t leave as early on Friday as I should have, so I hit the interstate parking lot. There I saw one of the saddest secondary accidents (not the accident that caused traffic to slow down, but an accident because of that slowdown) I’ve ever seen: a 1940s vintage Rolls Royce rear-ended by a much newer vehicle. Since I know that braking distances have improved vastly (3x better just since 1970!), I know who was at fault, who was not paying enough attention in heavy traffic.

My mother noticed that Cale’s two meltdowns were at the same time of day. She says Cale expects Mommy to pick him up at 5 PM, and he has a fit if I’m not there. The rest of the time, he was fine playing or cuddling or sleeping with anyone else, but he expects Mommy time at 5 PM. That’s pretty perceptive! Other than the 5 to 5:30 window, yelling was probably Karston.

I could not believe how much Cale had changed in 36 hours away from me, and how much he learned over the weekend! He started sitting unsupported (the tripod position, but he didn’t need his hands very often). In fact, he put his belly on the floor to reach a toy, and then he pushed himself back up to a sitting position! At one point, he was “swimming” (pre-crawling) to reach a toy, but since he’s not crawling, he didn’t get there. He could already pass a toy from one hand to the other, but he now rotates the toy for the best chewing angle. It’s always about the chewing for him.

Cale had 4 poops on Saturday and 3 on Sunday, which is a sign that I’ve eaten food to which he is allergic (dairy, soy, and egg known so far). Time to read labels! When I arrived Friday evening, I had to make a quick allergy-safe meal, and since there’s very little safe in the freezer section, I had to get creative. I boiled water, added a chicken breast, waited until it was almost done then added sliced squash and noodles. After draining all of that, I added a can of diced tomatoes with chipotle peppers for seasoning. Pretty tasty for something that quick straight from the store! (Finding rice milk at the coast took forever, though.) The basic items were safe, of course, and I read the ingredients on the noodles and the canned tomatoes to make sure those were Cale-safe as well.

We had to make sure we bought some shrimp with the still heads on because Karston is fascinated watching the process of popping heads off of shrimp. (When he goes fishing, he has to touch every fish before release. Not squeamish about that low-tide smell!)

Other than that, what you would expect for boat trips, shells, box turtle in the sand boat (a no-float turned into child’s play), and outstanding views.

Argh!!! I’ve been eating Healthy Choice meals for lunch lately, and I just discovered a problem. I was about to toss the box and decided to read the allergy information after the ingredients. I mean, I don’t use milk when I make a copycat fiesta chicken, or veggies, or fruit crisp … but right there, it said Soy, Wheat, Milk, Eggs. So I just ate three out of the four things Cale can’t tolerate. (And that means I will pay the price in sleepless nights.) I think I’m still allowed to eat wheat, although I was wondering since Cale hasn’t been sleeping well. Now that I read the label for fiesta chicken, I know the problem: I need to read labels more carefully. Just because I “know” how to make a meal doesn’t mean the packaged form is similar. *sigh* So I can eat the Lemon Pepper Fish, and that’s it.

Well, I like what I cook better anyway. This was just a time saver. Now I’ll look for lunches I can freeze in advance, but that’s not a problem.

Ring ring ring! We have a winner!

Now I understand why the doctor (didn’t blow me off and) said soy protein sensitivity when I said I thought Cale slept better when I didn’t eat soy: because even sleeping problems can be caused by protein sensitivity. Since I also think eggs are in this boat (probably egg white protein, thanks Daniel!) of causing baby sleep problems as well, that leaves me wondering just what protein is safe for me to eat, and soon safe for Cale to eat in baby food form.

One warning! When I was researching GERD, I learned that Similac Alimentum and Enfamil Nutraminagen are both milk-based. Both are broken down to be less likely to cause digestive upset for infants just sensitive to casein, but they are not strictly milk-free.