This post needs to be read with extreme enthusiasm. Last week, my four year old daughter ate wheat! She ate a few pieces of whole wheat pasta to be exact. If she passed this food trial I knew that her life was going to change in such a positive way. If she ended up throwing up for hours, we would be looking at a pretty major set back. This is the odd world of Food Protein Induced Entercolitis Syndrome (FPIES for short). A world that we have been living in since we first learned that acronym when Lyla was 7 months old.
Six weeks ago I decided to take my daughters digestive problem into my own hands. I scheduled an appointment with a Chiropractor. Little one wasn't getting adjusted or anything like what you'd expect from the word Chiropractor. I took her to a man who uses a treatment called Nambudripad's Allergy Elimination Technique (NAET for short, we like acronyms around these parts).
This treatment is weird and it involves concepts like "balancing energies". It sounds hokey to a lot of people, but it's totally non-invasive and it's the only thing available to try. I'll admit that before we even met Dr. Goulding, I was already referring to him as the "witch doctor". I had done a lot of internet research about this strange treatment and the two main points that I took with me were these. Leave your logic at the door, and it works for a lot people. With that in mind, I went for it and I'm glad I did. It was strange as hell, and my husband thinks I am crazy (nothing new there), but my daughter is sitting across from me right now, eating a freaking cracker!!! Believe it or not, this has been my wildest dream for the last three and a half years. It has been realized and now I want to ride a unicorn over a rainbow with Adam Levine. Fingers crossed, that will happen too!
She isn't eating something really tasty like a goldfish cracker or Ritz (way too many ingredients for me to panic about). She is indulging in a box of Carr's Table Water Crackers. If you don't know what these are or what they taste like, I'll explain. Go to your grandma's house and look for a dusty black box in the back of her pantry. Inside you'll find a sleeve of bland, tasteless, white crackers. You'll taste one and you'll throw the rest away because you're certain they're too stale to eat. They've gone bad is what you'll think. The average 5 year old would spit it out during a taste test. They aren't special. Your grandma doesn't even like them. She eats one every now and again to remind herself of the horrible, lean times of her childhood, better known as the Great Depression.
So Little one is eating the tasteless crackers and she is overwhelmed with excitement. She is giddy as can be with this new addition to her diet. She is fighting the urge to put this entire sleeve of white crackers into her tiny belly. "These are just too Yummy!" she says with absolute sincerity. This little cracker represents the beginning of what I hope will be a more normal diet. We haven't tried her other food enemies yet, corn and rice. Last time I checked, milk and eggs give her hives. Who knows if she can have oats? Her favorite treat is a Hall's cough drop (don't judge, corn syrup free and milk free sweets are impossible to find). It's not a slice of pizza or anything, but she can eat a bland cracker and I'm thrilled beyond belief. It's days like this that I know for certain that it's the little things in life that you have to grab onto and enjoy. This is, without a doubt, my best little moment of the year.
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