My Birthday Breakfast

Happy Birthday to me!!!!

It is my 35th birthday and I have been on this elimination diet for at least 3 months. We have been pretty strict and I have decided that we are going to have strawberries! Of all the stuff I have missed these would be on the top of the list. My kids beg for them and I feel so bad. So we are going to eat some.

Wish us luck.

My favorite piece of equipment, the kitchenaid mixer. I use this thing to mix everything. It is less work for me to use this thing than it is for me to mix it by hand or hold an electric mixer. Thank you mom for my favoritest birthday present EVAH!!!!

So first we mix the pancake batter. I used Bisquick mix. They make a gluten free kind. I really should have used it but I still had some of this stuff left. It uses dextrose instead of sugar so it is still sucrose/fructose free. However, the wheat will make my psoriasis worse. I am willing to deal with it.

Yummm. One of my favorite things. Melted Butter! I prefer the taste of organic butter. And it is better for you. I melted 2 whole sticks of it and added 3 scoops of stevia. The kind I use has no added ingredients. It is nothing but the stevia extract. It is processed until it is a fine white powder. The scoop is so small it looks like a doll spoon. This stuff is strong. It does not take much and I strongly encourage you to level the scoop. I also added 3 tbsp of "now" brand dextrose to make it more syrupy. And then I melted it in the microwave.

Here is the final result. Golden brown pancakes, sliced strawberries, with the butter poured all over the top. The kids and I all had plates like this and there was enough butter to go around. Even for thirds which all the kids ate.

The hardest part of this diet is not eating all the foods we love. We can learn to live without most stuff, if we have too, but not strawberries. I will gladly suffer for strawberries every once in a while.

In the future I will be using a gluten free mix or making my own from scratch with buckwheat, oat, and some other flours. I haven't gotten around to figuring out a flour mix yet. Surprisingly, this did  not make me very sick. I had stomach pains for an hour or 2 but nothing real serious. I was tired for the rest of the day but that could have been all the walking we did the day before. If the strawberries were going to cause real problems, it would have caused 3 days of fatigue and 1 day in the bathroom. So now we can safely say that strawberries are an ok food.... for a treat. Not for everday of course, and not too many at a time either. They still caused dark circles under our eyes after eating them.

ETA: This did not make my psoriasis worse. YAY me! Also I looked at the gluten free kind. Unlike the regular kind, it uses sugar instead of dextrose. So boo on them.

Why I am not weaning my daughter.

I have been asked countless times when I am going to wean my 19 mo old daughter. The answer : I am not. I assure you that she will quit nursing in plenty of time to attend college. There is nothing wrong with nursing her until she is ready to quit and everybody will get over it.

I weaned my now 4 yr old daughter when she was 23 months old. I was a couple of months pregnant and it hurt alot. I really regret it. I wish I had worked through the pain. She was already skinnier than I would have liked her to be. But I hadn't connected the dots yet. When she started solid food, she started losing her body fat. Then when I took away her breastmilk, she started looking like a walking skeleton with a distended belly. I now know that she was malnourished. it wasn't because there was no food. I fed her alot, all the time, anything she wanted. It was the fructose malabsorption. She was eating the wrong food and it was causing her to not absorb any nutrients or fat. This went on for a year. I kept going to the doctor and asking. I knew she wasn't looking right. They kept assuring me she was fine. I couldn't help but think that she looked fine before I stopped nursing her. So I did research. Breastmilk is high in easily digested fat. It also has properties to it that help heal guts, reduce bacterial overgrowth, control gut yeast, and help regulate metabolism. I wanted so badly to start nursing her again. I asked our family doctor and she gave me some suggestions to help, but alas my poor daughter had forgotten how to nurse. So I started pumping for her. Every morning and every afternoon I would pump. After getting her diagnosed with fructose Intolerance I learned that breastmilk is fructose free. Even the high amounts of fructose I was ingesting would not cross into the milk.

After having been on the diet for several months, my now 4 yr old daughter looks great. She has a round face again. She has grown muscle where it belongs. Before she had no muscle because her body had been eating it for fuel. I pumped breastmilk for her to help her build up fat and muscle. It was the only food I knew for sure was good for her. I think she has reached a point in her life where she no longer feels the need for breastmilk. She no longer asks me to pump for her every day. She only asks on days when she feels ill, mostly because she ate something new that we were trialing and it didn't agree with her.

My now 19 mo old daughter shows the same reactions. She was not old enough to test but the GI doctor assured me that because she had signs and all the other children had it, that she would have it as well. She will gladly chow down on fructose free food. I follow her lead. That is how I will find out what makes her stomach upset and what causes her issues. If she doesn't want to eat it, then fine. She doesn't have to eat it. Later, she will usually steal the same food off my plate. I am not worried about what she is not eating because I know that every time she nurses she is getting the perfect food in the perfect amount. The longer she nurses, the healthier she will be. That is why I am doing it. For her. It has nothing to do with me wanting her to stay a baby. To be honest I could do with a little less nursing gymnastics or accidental nipple injuries. I do get slightly embarrassed when she tries to dive into my shirt in public. I do see the looks people give me and it does hurt my feelings. But I am willing to go through all of it. For her. Because it is what is best for her. And everybody who has something bad to say or dirty looks to give me can all jump off a cliff. Because none of you matter. She matters.



This message is supported and approved of by her primary care physician, her geneticist, her gastroenterologist, and her mother.

Why I don't want Flouride in my water.

Let's look at the reason they put it in there. To keep your teeth strong. Doesn't that mean that it is a medicine? Or a supplement? Either way, don't we have the right to not be medicated against our will. If you want flouride for your teeth, you have the option of buying flouride toothpaste or getting flouride treatments from your dentist. But we do not have the option of buying the flouride-free water. The only way to do that is to have your own well. Which means you are not living in the city or relying on city water.
This means that we are being medicated every time we drink it whether or not we want to be medicated.

The fact is, I pay the city for this water. I wish I didn't have to. I wish there was an option to buy it with or without. Even if you buy bottled water, it will still have flouride in it. If you drink juice, it is mixed with flouridated water. Your tuna packed in water.... mostly likely flouridated. Why? Because companies use water that is chemically cleaned, and that means adding flouride to it.

Every time I read something about flouride I get a little bit more peeved off. The flouride they use for the water is a chemical waste product. Waste they can't get rid of anywhere else. It isn't even the kind of flouride that would do any good.. if flouride actually does any good. The evidence that I have seen, doesn't even support that theory. It seems that people with flouridated water have just as many cavities if not more than people without flouridated water. So putting "medication" in our water to help our teeth doesn't even seem to work. More and more cities are removing flouride from their city water. More and more studies are showing that the amount of flouride in our water is causing flouridosis.

I am convinced that flouride in my water is making it harder for me to heal. Flouride is not meant to be ingested, but yet we drinks loads of it everyday. How would I go about getting my city to remove it from the water supply. Better yet, how can I find myself a farm to live on so I can have a well?

Everything we have been diagnosed with.

Me:
Diagnosis:

Ehlers-Danlos Type 3. Hypermobility.
Dysautonomia
Orthostatic Intolerance
Fructose Malabsorption Syndrome
Fibromyalgia
Gastroesophagitis Reflux Disease
Erosive Distal Esophagitis
Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Scalp Psoriasis
Borderline Personality Disorder
Agoraphobia
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Social Anxiety Disorder - Panic Attacks
Recurrent Depressive Disorder

Hospitalizations:

1990- Broken Collar Bone
1995 Gave birth - 3 day stay
1995 Severe hematomas and concussions from spousal abuse
1995 Broken Jaw
1999 Tubal Pregnancy
2001 Emotional Instability due to overprescribed medications
2007 gave birth - 2 day stay
2009 gave birth - 24 hour stay

David, my son:
Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome type 3 Hypermobility
Fructose Malabsorption Syndrome
Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome

Laura:
Fructose Malabsorption Syndrome
At 5 years old she will be formally diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos type 3. She has the functional gut disorder associated with it.

Emily:
She can not be officially diagnosed at this age. However, the doctors told me that she will have EDS because she already shows signs of fructose malabsorption (gets red under her eyes when she eats the wrong stuff), and she has brittle teeth. So she has it too.