Three dry mornings! and food allergies.

Three dry mornings and without using pullups!  This is a HUGE milestone for my soon to be 5 years old son C.    Potty training for him was NOT easy.  We would have him totally trained and then he would totally relapse and  wet himself every time, and this happened several times.  We tried everything we could think of, even using homeopathic bedwetting drops last summer.

I began reading a book about ADHD (he was diagnosed by a pediatric neuropsychologist January 2010 - right  before he turned 4) and it discussed several things I hadn't though of, including hidden food allergies.  We had been very careful with his foods as an infant, and he had never reacted to anything.  As a toddler he reacted once to peanuts (SCARY) and several times to cinnamon.  But in three different allergy tests, he was negative for anything.  But the food allergies and ADHD had me wondering - was it a food dye or something in everything he ate?  We had no clue and no idea where to start.  Last summer, just a few weeks after the tornado destroyed the hospital that we use, C broke out in hives.  I wasn't initally too concerned - he always breaks out in hives when we stop/switch his allergy meds.  We were switching him
so that we as a family could all be on the same thing - only ONE to buy.  But these hives were different.

They kept spreading.

Eventually it got to the point that I got really worried.  We had done the benedryl and bathed him in oatmeal.  And that didn't help.  So we went to the hospital.....the TENT hospital, as it was called.  The ER was ten or so beds with barely any privacy.

C is a super skinny kiddo and he has my veins, meaning drawing blood or hitting a vein for IV's is difficult.  Mix with that an intelligent 4 year old who was hurting (his feet were so swollen by that time that he wouldn't stand), no soundproofing, and it was past bedtime.  They had to stick him more than once, and I can still remember him screaming, "Don't poke me!!" over and over at the top of his lungs.  Still hard to remember that!!  Eventually they got all the meds in him and we were able to go home, after I bought him an Ironhide transformer.

He looked much better the next morning, but the hives started coming back later in the day.  So after a trip to his pediatrician's new office we had an appointment to see an allergist.  We saw that allergist at his temporary office at Memorial Hall and got C's blood drawn before we left the building.  Then we  w..a..i..t..e..d....  The doc had to wait until he had his new office before the blood could be tested.  Then we found out his machine had sustained more damage than initially thought, so we waited some more.
We found out C has minor allergies to wheat and egg whites, and he reacted to several other foods (chicken, chocolate, beef, and a few others) but they were all under the "allergy" limit.

So, MAJOR diet change ensued.  No more wheat or egg whites.  Which meant no more flour, which is used in EVERYTHING and can be found in trace amounts in many foods.  C has now been wheat and egg white free for about three months and wow have things changed!!  He no longer has accidents (except for a very occasional one from playing too hard) and his ADHD symptoms have greatly decreased!!  We do know when he gets wheat because he will become more defiant and have more tantrums, but I am determined to keep the wheat away (see my 2012 "resolution").  Bedwetting hasn't happened in over a month, and we officially stopped wearing pullups as a backup.  It is amazing what food allergies can do to our bodies (and NOT in a good way)!!

Since all this happened with C, I got my allergies retested.  I am no longer sensitive to soy, corn, or tomato (yay), but have a slight allergy to wheat.  My 6 year old daughter K is allergic to egg whites only, when she was retested.  Our allergist told us allergy tests can be unreliable in kids under 4 years, which is why we got so many negative tests with C.  My two year old L can't have pears or pineapple, which we discovered through elimination diets.  He gets nasty diaper rashes from them.  And our 8 month old R can't have corn.  There is only ONE formula that is guaranteed to be corn-free, and it's $10 per day....

All that being said, there's power in knowing what makes us not feel well and I would encourage others to not give up finding out the root cause of ailments.  We could have medicated C for his ADHD, but it wouldn't have fixed anything.  We know the cause and he is improving without any meds - none for ADHD and none for his allergies!



Oh, I want to welcome my FIRST follower too!!  Thanks for coming by my humble blog!