The allergy testing for Ada yesterday afternoon wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

When Rosie had it done at age four she cried and sobbed through the pricks.

Ada on the other hand…laughed.  Why am I not surprised?  Typical Ada. (Ada also loves the finger prick for iron testing because she gets to see her “real blood!” and she gets a bandaid.)

We also go to weigh and measure her, which hasn’t been done in awhile.  She was 31 pounds and 38 inches tall.  She’s wearing 4t clothes.  By the end of summer I’m sure she’ll be in 5t.  She’s thinned out a lot recently, but she feels like her bones are filled with cement when you pick her up.  Rosie felt so delicate in comparison!

 

The allergy tests wouldn’t all fit on Ada’s back, so we have to go back in a month to test the rest of the things.

 

 

That one you see on the bottom left that looks really itchy is the histamine.  It’s the control that’s supposed to swell up for the maximum reaction.  This picture was taken right after we started the testing.  You have to wait 15 minutes to see what swells up.

I wasn’t surprised to find out Ada is allergic to milk protein.  That’s been the cause of her red rash and random projectile vomiting, and likely the cause of her constant belly aches. We’ve been eating mostly dairy free for awhile except for occasional chocolate and candy, and milk used in baking.  It’s not going to be that much of a leap to move to fully dairy free.  I also have to eat dairy free because allergens go through breastmilk and she’s still nursing, though I’m only making a few drops of milk at this point in pregnancy.  Since I’m lactose intolerant it’s not that heartbreaking to say goodbye to dairy, though I will miss Reece’s desperately.

 

Unfortunately Ada also reacted mildly to oats, strawberries, bananas, and pork.  Those are all her favorite foods!  Go figure.

The doctor said to eliminate all of those things for one month, then at our next appointment in March we can discuss adding them back in one by one to see if there is a reaction. It’s not that hard to avoid oats, bananas, or strawberries. Pork is the hardest because of gelatin.  Marshmallows, for example, contain gelatin derived from pork.  It’s hidden everywhere!  We accidentally ate marshmallows this morning before it occurred to me.  We were going to make rice crispy treats.  Dang it!  They sell pork-free marshmallows at the Arabic store nearby, it’s just a matter of going there and buying them.  I guess having a big Arabic community here pays off in this case.  I can shop at the Arabic grocery and know nothing there will have any hidden pork.  (Also, Arabic food is freaking delicious…)

I’m hoping we’ll be able to add back in some if not all of the mild allergens.  The reaction for those was only +1.  Milk products (including goat’s milk) we have to avoid for a year before retesting.

I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to add back in bananas, unfortunately. Ada is allergic to latex, which has food cross allergens and bananas are one of those foods.  We have to test her for the other foods related to latex next time.  (The foods break down in the body and mimic the same protein in latex that causes the allergic reaction in people.)

 

I really just want her body to stop hurting all the time!  After avoiding most dairy for awhile, eating gluten free in the past, and strictly avoiding rye and pistachio contamination for my own allergies it’s not that scary to eliminate foods from our diet now.  When I first started eating gluten free it was extremely overwhelming.  I’m like an ingredient list master at this point!  It’s almost like a fun challenge.

The hardest part is eating out because you don’t always get a clear answer about what’s in your food.  At least food allergies are more popular now, or that’s to say people are more aware of them these days.  Oats, bananas, and stawberries aren’t easily hidden or cross contaminated like rye or pistachio.  I can eat rye at Panera and not know it because they sliced my bagel in the same slicer they used for the rye bread.  I hate that!  I have to avoid all restaurants that serve rye for the most part, including places like Cracker Barrel because they put rye in their pancakes and it’s all cross contaminated with rye flour floating in the air and on gloves.  I’ve tried eating there three times and got sick each time despite not having rye in the ingredients of my food.  Not worth it!

Ada is lucky none of her allergens are that sneaky!  I hope nothing else turns up on the remaining test items next month.

She is also mildly allergic to cats, it was a +1 on the scale of reaction also.  She takes Zyrtec, and that seems to alleviate the allergy symptoms from cats, so it’s not too big of a deal.  She loves our kitties!

I’m happy she wasn’t allergic to any trees, grasses, or molds.  The only outdoor allergy she had was cocklebur/mugwort.  I suspect there is probably something else seasonal she is allergic to because she’s had bad allergy symptoms after playing outside in the spring and fall more than once, including sinus headaches behind her eyes.  The Zyrtec helps all of that except the sinus headaches.  Then I just give her ibuprofen.  Poor baby inherited all these things from me.  So sad!  (We took her to the eye doctor incase the pain behind her eyes was something else, but she thought it was just sinus pain.)

Mainly I’m THRILLED she isn’t allergic to wheat, corn, or soy.  Those are impossible to eliminate, especially wheat, without throwing away everything in the cabinets and scrubbing down the whole kitchen.  My pregnant self is just not up for a change that big right now!

She’s still complaining a little about her belly hurting today, but apparently it can take 2-4 weeks for all the allergens to totally leave your system.  Can’t wait for a belly ache free Ada!

I hope Baby Boy is lucky like Rosie and has absolutely no food allergies or intolerances.

 

Here are pictures from recently!  These are mainly of Ada because Rosie is always in her room playing, reading, or not interested inhaving her picture taken.  Ada is happy to pose and act silly as soon as she sees the camera.  I’m taking advantage of it while it lasts!

 

She was eating a powdered donut last week.  (Which has milk in it…sad times.)

This one is out of focus, but I saved it anyway…had to.

Rosie, doing a goofy half grin.

Her two front teeth were coming in really crooked, but now that they’re pushing the neighboring baby teeth loose the front adult teeth are straightening out.

I was getting a little worried! I hope they continue to straighten out!

Reality in my house…while mama sits on the couch and grows a baby…who is sucking out every ounce of life force from my body.

These are from last night–making bread dough.

Rosie wasn’t interested in helping, she was busy drawing and writing a story in a notebook as usual!

 

 

 

 

Today is my birthday.  I’m now the ripe old age of 26.

To be honest it wasn’t a very great birthday.  The girls have been sick with a cold and Ada hasn’t slept more than two hours in the past three days. I am totally exhausted, like to the point of being non-functional.

When I went out to check on our chicks this morning something had eaten the skin off of the head of one chick.  The poor little thing was still alive, but it had a bare skull.  The rest of its body was unharmed.  Disturbing and sad.  I held it for several hours this morning to keep it warm while it died.  I thought about putting it out of its misery but then I didn’t really know how to easily do that.  It was still peeping and trying to open its eyes and move around.

What is really creepy is that the same thing happened to another chick the night before.  There’s a serial chick killer!  It scalps my chicks!

The chicks are in the garage with two Silkie hens brooding them.  The garage door is closed, and I know the Silkies didn’t do that to their own babies because they are very protective and loving mamas.

When I called my mom to tell her about it she suggested that it could be crickets.  My garage is infested with these freaky monster crickets. They’re called camel crickets, or cave crickets.  They’re huge, the size of a man’s thumb, and they have humped backs.  They even have toes.  There are so many of them in the garage. They only come out at night.  If you go in there in the dark the floor is just solid with them.  They are on the walls too.  Chickens sleep very soundly in the dark, so it’s possible that these disgusting creepy freak monster crickets could sneak into the nest and eat a chick.

Since the broody hens have been in the garage I’ve been closing the door, thus trapping the cricket population inside without food.  Before this the door was always ajar because it doesn’t latch well.  I already knew that it’s not safe to leave crickets overnight in the lizard cage because they will eat the lizard.  I guess they eat chicks too.

My mom suggested I put up lights over the nest so that the crickets are deterred. My garage is lit up like a Christmas tree tonight.  I went in there earlier, after dark, and I didn’t see a single cricket.  Fingers crossed they don’t murder anymore of my fluffies tonight.  :(

On top of that tragedy, I must have eaten something wrong by accident because my intestines had that awful flaming sensation brewing inside of them today.

I found out that I am extremely allergic to rye–did I ever write about that?  The testing also showed I’m allergic to pistachios, which are easy to avoid.  Unfortunately it’s hard to avoid rye because of cross contamination.  Really annoying.  I must have accidentally eaten some rye hidden in bakery goods (like crumbs on it by accident or mixed in the wheat flour) because eating rye gives me liquid fire in my lower abdomen the following day, plus my mouth feels irritated and swollen, and my nose is extremely stuffy.

Awesome.

I’m glad I figured out what causes it, I just wish it was easier to avoid.  (I’m also lactose intolerant, which isn’t as big of a deal to me as the stupid rye allergy.)

Randomly I am not allergic to any other grains even though they are closely related. Just rye.  Not gluten, or wheat.  My body hates rye!

Anyway, I spent the day feeling like crap and doing nothing.  My kids were grumpy from being sick and tired.  Tyler had to be at work early.  My house is a mess. My intestines were too angry to even eat birthday cake or go to birthday dinner with my parents. How sad.

Tomorrow will be a better day, right?  Right.

I was feeling rather sorry for myself and considering a lame pity party until I went outside this afternoon to water the birds and the garden.  I heard this huge commotion and suddenly my duck June came marching out from her hidden nest way back under the chicken coop.  She quack honks so loudly when she comes out.  I think she likes to announce her presence.

She had four ducklings following her!

I couldn’t believe it.  She’s been hiding under the chicken coop on and off for months but nothing has ever happened.  I was beginning to wonder what she was doing under there.

Benny and June made adorable babies!  Squee!

She hatched ducklings ON MY BIRTHDAY!  Of all days!

All the chickens were staring at the ducklings as if they were thinking, “What the heck are those things?”

Here they are trying food and water for the first time.  Well they didn’t try it so much as just look at it.

Watching their daddy duck eat:

“Hey guys, what is this wet stuff?”

Warning me to scoot back from her babies.  Shocking, she’s usually very tame and will eat from your hand.

Don’t mess with Mama Duck, huh?

Oh, hello there!  See how tiny they are?

I love it when ducks peer upwards with one eye.  (Especially when they all do it in unison.)

Ah, they are so cute.  It’s nearly unbearable.  I just love ducks.

I’m thrilled to have surprise birthday ducklings!

They totally made my day better.

Note: The first half of the entry (the writing) is about Ada’s stomach virus, and poop vs. my food allergies.  If you’re eating or that offends you, you may want to skip to the cute kid pictures below.

 

Ada had her first stomach virus on Wednesday.

She woke up at 5 in the morning and burped then choked a little, and spewed.  Thankfully it was all breastmilk, but still.

She threw up all morning and all afternoon.  It was so heartbreaking.  She kept begging to nurse, and I would let her nurse for half a minute then take it away, and then she would throw it back up and sob for more milk.

I was getting worried, but around 5 in the afternoon she had some pedialite and it stayed down, and she got color back in her face and got up and started jumping on the bed.  It was like a weird horrible 12 hour virus.  Same thing Rosie had a few months ago exactly!

No one else got sick.  Knock on wood.

I’m thinking she picked it up either at the allergy doctor on Monday or the dentist on Tuesday.  I let her play with the toys at both places.  When Rosie got sick with the same virus it was after playing with the toys at the eye doctor.

I am a total germophobe.  I’m thinking I should never let them touch the toys at those offices again.  Healthy immune systems be damned.

 

Speaking of the allergist, I got some great answers there.  The appointment was for me.

Years ago, before I got pregnant with Rosie, I went to Mexico and stayed with a family there.  I got a parasite but didn’t know it.  The regular doctor just told me I had developed IBS randomly, so I suffered through random diarrhea every two weeks and increasingly horrible abdominal cramps.

I tried eating gluten free for months and I felt better at first, and then the cramps and diarrhea came back so I gave up on that and went back to eating delicious gluten.

At one point, before getting pregnant with Ada, I went to the herbalist my midwife recommended.  He said he thought I had a parasite and gave me some kind of creepy tree fungus tincture to take that would deworm me.

So I took this tincture, it was so disgusting tasting! I had to drink a whole little bottle of it at once and it tasted like…*shudder*….nursing home and bad vodka.

I got really high.  I felt like I was walking on marshmallows.  I’m guessing that’s what a bad, bad shroom high feels like.  Never again.  Ever.

Anyway, during the 24 hours after taking it I shat my brains out. Near the end I started pooping out worms.  Seriously–like something horrible you would see when you mistakenly look up human parasite pictures on google images.  It was one of the most horrific things that has EVER happened to me.

The herbalist said that the high feeling was from the toxins the worms release as they die and not from the tincture.  I don’t know…but it was NOT pleasant.

I had to take a second dose exactly two weeks later to kill any eggs.  The second dose also gave me explosive diarrhea, but no worms came out that time.  (Thankfully.)

The herbalist said that I could have lasting digestive effects from the parasite infestation. It damages your intestinal lining, causing you to suffer from leaky gut or food allergies and intolerance that you didn’t have prior to the parasite.

Fun, right?  Lucky me!

For future reference, if you ever travel to a third world country and come home with reoccurring Montezuma’s revenge then YOU MIGHT HAVE WORMS.

Just sayin’.

 

So.  That in mind, I have had random digestive issues ever since.  Not the same specifically horrible abdominal pain I had from the parasite, but something else.  Like gas bubbles, bloating, a general feeling like something was fermenting inside my gut.  Random diarrhea.  Really great wonderful, leaving me afraid to eat anything pretty much.

Finally I decided to go to the allergist.  I tried to research different methods of food allergy testing and it was very confusing.  Lots of different opinions.  After a year of putting it off I just asked the allergist what she recommended and brought up some of my accuracy concerns.  She said I should just start with the skin prick testing.  Therefore, skin pricks I did.

The testing showed I was allergic to only two things.

I am severely allergic to rye!  The thing swelled up huge, and my nose immediately stuffed up.  I had trouble breathing within a minute of the test being administered.  Awesome.

The other allergy that showed up was pistachios.  Random.  Not allergic to any other grains or tree nuts, just those two things.

I have been shelling pistachios for Rosie on a daily basis, though not eating them myself since I don’t really like them.  The 12 grain bread I’ve been eating contains rye!  So does the chex mix.  And the stuff from the lower shelves of the Whole Foods bakery case where there are rye bread crumbs!  My mouth and tongue kept swelling up after eating things and I could not figure out why.

That mystery is solved.  Rye and pistachios, I can avoid those!

The allergist said exposure can also cause nausea and diarrhea, so…yeah.

 

But here’s the best part.  The allergist also said I have all of the symptoms of lactose intolerance.

Hmmm.  Well, I haven’t been able to eat ice cream or cream based soups without getting immediately and violently ill (within half an hour of eating) in the past couple of years.  I guess I never thought all lactose was making me sick!

Apparently the lactose can’t digest in your intestines, causing gas and bloating.  It slows down your intestinal motility, making you constipated.  The lactose keeps your intestines from absorbing water like normal. The the gas and the water and undigested lactose make this fun soup that causes cramps and explodes out of you in the form of scary poop.

Hi, lactose intolerance…we are not friends.

She suggested I avoid as much dairy as possible and take Lactaid tablets when eating anything with dairy.

Well that’s not too hard.  Certainly not as hard as eating gluten free.  (I am not allergic to wheat at all, by the way!  Just rye!)

So this Lactaid is like LIFE ALTERING.

Why have I not tried it sooner?

Since taking it I have had no rolling gas bubbles.  No horrible bloating.  No cramps.  No diarrhea.

My intestines feel like nothing.  Like, they might as well not even be there.

Amazing.

CHRISTMAS FREAKIN’ MIRACLE.

 

So we’ll see.  I hope this solves the problems and it lasts forever.  Fingers crossed.

Seems great so far!!

The only problem is apparently I am (was) eating a diet chock full of lactose.  Those Lactaid tablets are expensive and kind of annoying to take all the time.  I had to take four of them after eating macaroni and cheese because those same symptoms started.  The initial two tablets weren’t enough, but luckily two more took care of it before anything bad happened.  I’ll think twice before eating mac and cheese again.  I’m not even going to dare try ice cream even with the Lactaid.  Not worth risking the resulting misery.

 

Ok, if you survived digestive system and allergy talk here are pictures from yesterday.  We had the girls’ best friends over to play.  They live in the mountains three hours from here, so only get to see them every few months.

Little Miss is still kind of grumpy after being sick.

“PUT THE CAMERA DOWN MOMMA!”

Watching a movie together…

And a quick series of Ada and Eli jumping on the bed together!