A little cooperation please

Sooooo.... an update on the eczema trail.

If you're feeling I'm dwelling on a very minor issue, you may be right. I feel, compared to the hardships many people face, that this is a relatively small blip. But, as a physiotherapist once told me in regards to Seth's mild, mild cerebral palsy (comparable to most cerebral palsy conditions in name alone), that to me it is a big deal, because it's happening to my child and that makes it a big deal to me.

We took Max for allergy testing and discovered he's allergic to gluten, among other things. Upon beginning a gluten-free diet (me, not him, as he's still exclusively breastfed), HE SLEPT! And we slept, and life was grand.

Seriously, within two days of me eliminating gluten from my diet he was able to sleep as normal as babies do. He stills eats once or twice a night, but mostly just... sleeps. Without waking up kicking his legs with belly pains and diarrehea, without being awake for hours upset and obviously tired but in pain and unable to sleep, like we had dealt with for most of January. Even better, his rash has become 'manageable'. He has had little flare-ups and his cradle cap is being persistant, but even these are a thousand percent better than it has been. His chin is a bit of a mess, but I'm pretty sure the constant teething drool is the culprit. He has mostly clear skin, most of the time, and the cradle cap and rashes that we're dealing with now are so very much less severe than before.

I'm still frustrated with... our medical system? Our culture? Not being able to cure him? I'm not sure at what exactly to pinpoint my frustration, but this whole process is making me crazy. Medical doctors (the ones revered and pushed as go-to source for our health information), only give me drugs to soothe his symptoms while they poo-poo alternative medicine. Yes. I just said poo-poo. The alternative practioners (who I admittedly tend to trust and appreciate more since I don't see them as salespeople to drug companies), work diligently to help me find the cause of the problem rather than just bandaging the symptoms, but also work hard to scare me off using drugs for his symptoms.  

Can we just have both sides work together to help me take care of my family please!?!

I believe that our body is a complicated, intertwined design, and that the true implications of drug use are not really known. On anyone's body, let alone a very little developing baby body. But, I also believe we are lucky to have medicine and doctors knowledgeable in it available to us when we need it (although 'when we need it' is highly overdiagnosed in our culture). I'm not sure what poor Max would still be fighting without the steriod creams and course of antibiotics it has taken to get his body back to some kind of acceptable state where his immune system can cope and keep up the fight.

I also believe nutrition, and all the minut details that food entails, is the key to our health, and that it's a conversation mostly ignored in the average visit with our doctor. Of course what we put in our bodies affects, may I even say causes, the output our bodies give back. Why, over the course of many doctors visits with multiple doctors over two months, resulting in a hospitalization, antibiotics, and bottle after bottle of steroid creams, did no doctor suggest looking into food allergies? When a homeopathic visit (where we had the allergy testing done) brings it up first and foremost as accepted and obvious knowledge and helps us combat the problem very effectively in as short as two days?

May I repeat, can these two fields please work together? Please stop damning the other and help me help my family? 

I'm just a mom.

I'm just a mom, trying to sift through so much information in areas I've never even thought of before. I'm not a researcher, a biologist, a nutritionist, a medical doctor, or a naturopathic doctor. I know a bit about art. But I can see what's happening with my kids. And I'm a bit of a cerebral chick, attempting to piece together their little clues and all of the information I can get my hands on.

Max and I met with our family doctor this week, just a bit of a follow-up appointment so I feel like I have one common thread in this series of appointments. I do really like her. She patronizes me much less than most doctors, not judging or lecturing when I disagree. She was saying how much better he looks and listening to me list all the avenues we've been down to get here. How the gluten elimination has been key. How we discovered his allergies through computerized electro dermal screening with a homeopathic doctor. How we're now beginning allergy elimination treatments through a form of auricular acupuncture, a very non-invasive treatment done with a similar instrument as was used to test for allergies through acupuncture points in the ear. To which my doctor said "Great! If it works...", conveying quite clearly she thinks it is a hoax.  

Our naturopathic doctors lead us to a Vitamin B cream that works the best for his cradle cap, probiotic drops to boost both of our immune systems, discussing vitamins I should add, areas in which my own body may be low, why my adrenals and immune system may not be up to par that could have caused him to be born in the same state (I digress, but I'm pretty sure the stress of a move, a new job, extensive renovations, three kids and a new baby in a year might have something to do with my body being a bit run-down) and what we can do about it. Information and aid none of the medical doctors produced. Not to mention leading us to the most important discovery, that food allergies are at least the primary trigger of his eczema, and a path to treat allergies. All in a non-invasive, complication free, no risk of negative unknown longterm effects path. I really just don't think alternative medicine is a hoax.

On another note, I'm tired. I'm tired of hyperanalyzing and monitoring Max's skin and patterns. I'm tired of sounding like a crazy, strung out Mom who can't seem to string a conversation together that doesn't involve discussion of allergies, symptoms, and medical series of events. And probably poop. Poop always seems to make it's way into the conversation. I've caught myself daydreaming of Max being three, of that magical birthday where I'll wake up feeling the desire to shower, realizing I have hobbies and projects I enjoy, and a husband who wants to go for a run with me. Where diapers have no part in my day, my little people can all use words and spoons, and can put themselves in their own carseats and most likely even buckle up themselves. I vaguely remember that point happening briefly between Seth and Claire, and I'm holding onto it tightly.

The eczema trail continues...

Last weekend, Max and I watched the snowstorm of the winter from the hospital window, the sky white around the fuzzy yellow lights, the cars sliding and spinning their wheels in the parking lot, the plows worked away through the night. Max had been admitted for a skin infection. His eczema we have been battling had apparently made a freeway for a germ, making his rash exponentionally worse over the couple weeks since Christmas.



Maxwell last week.

My last post, starring our boy Max on his 'half-birthday', was taken despite the whole-body rash, as I decided this might be our new normal. It was a bit of an odd pick for my this moment post, but he had just learned to sit up that day and was enjoying a happy moment, something that had been so rare through the last few weeks. The poor guy was so sore and upset, despite our best efforts only his little nose was rash free. We were feeling at the end of our rope, not sure what to do to help him. Two days later, after nearly two weeks of sleepless nights for both Max and us, feeling like the appointment we had made with our family doctor would never arrive, we went to emergency. There we happened upon a pediatrician who sent us to the pediatric wing of the hospital an hour away that afternoon.

Four days and nights of cream dosings, antibiotics, tylenol, and wet dressings later (a technique I had never heard of but am now a huge fan of, where baby gets moisturized then put to bed in wet jammies, waking up in the morning to dry jammies with lovely moist and more clear skin), we brought home a relatively rash-free and much happier and well-rested Maxwell. Mommy was also much happier and well-rested. 

  

A much happier Max this week.

I have pictures of the whole event on my cell phone (happy pictures, of a really cute baby in hospital pyjamas making steady progress), but unfortunately the cell phone has sprouted legs (perhaps 2 year old legs named Claire?) and walked off at the moment. Hopefully, those pictures will follow. (Found it! In Claire's toy puppy kennel of course, why wouldn't that be the first obvious place to look?)

Starting to look so much better!

Calling Doctor Max...

Now that he was really starting to feel better, we got downright bored. With all the lotion in it combined with his hair that had rubbed off on the sides, Max had one mighty fine mohawk.

Rocking the do.

I stayed with Max, of course, which was strange and good all at the same time. It took three days for the nurses to realize the hospital feeds moms of breastfed patients, making my life a little difficult. It took two days for me to stop being an anxious jerk. And it was so quiet, Max and I missed everyone and our busy house very much. But at the same time, as the fourth babe, Max has never enjoyed so much of my undivided attention. And having a bit of quiet time was undoubtedly good to remind myself that although it's my baby so it's a huge deal to me, it's comparitively a very small, manageable health issue we're lucky to be dealing with and I would do well to be thankful. Around day two, I felt my shoulders begin to relax as Max showed signs of improvement. I tried (am still trying) to shoo away my admonitions about the drugs being used on my baby, with a dose of realism that I don't have a better answer, that Max couldn't live the way things were, that the chemical cocktail was the very thing making my baby feel better, sleep, play.


Back home, enjoying his built in entertainers, an act we appreciate all the more now.

As we were bringing Max out of the hospital though, I couldn't help but feel nervous. I was reminded of the day we emerged from the hospital with our newborn Thane, our firstborn, the anxious moment of taking this delicate bundle away with us. Would all the strides Max had made be undone at our house? Our dusty wood-heated renovation project with cats and a busy mom who doesn't clean enough?

A little Vitamin D and Grammie love can make a guy feel better.

My awesome mom and sister and a friend came to the rescue to help me clean the house from top to bottom and catch up on laundry (which prompted Troy to point out there was a strong argument for polegamy), attempting to at least start from a good, hopefully healthy environment. We're so lucky my mother-in-law came up this week as well, helping us a great deal in getting back in the swing of things. We reluctantly returned one cat (the one that is twice as big and sheds like crazy) to the vet where we had originally got the two cats from in the fall. I know, sacrilege to the pet owners out there. And we took notice of the humidity in our house (or lack of rather, not registering on the barometer) and installed a humidifier on our furnace. The central vac is on it's way soon, to make dustbusting easier and hopefully therefore more frequent. Max now sports a new hazelwood necklace, supposed to bring his skin from acidic to alkaline (a state that doesn't support disease). In the very least, it's cute as hell.

Even before the hospital visit, I had upped my vitamin B's, omega 3's, water, and probiotics intake, hoping to help Max's skin recoup. We've addressed soaps and laundry detergent already, and didn't use scented or extraneous products to begin with. We had begun acupuncture appointments for Max before the hospital visit (a non-needle kind of allergy therapy).

Despite all this, there have definitely been flare-ups. The rashes on his little face especially, where I don't put as much hydrocortisone, will flare up and go away several times a day. If I stop applying the hydrocortisone twice a day, it comes back all over quite quickly, although with close care it's definitely a thousand times better than before. It's quite mysterious.

Sigh.

My ray of hope that we won't have to just wait until he grows out of it or settle in with it for the long run?

Food.

I hold on to the belief that we are what we eat. While I definitely took an unhealthy nosedive in the food department this week (I'll chalk it up to stress?), I've called to make an appointment with a naturopathic doctor recommended to me. While a little slow to get to this step, not sure of who to call since we haven't had to make that connection yet here, I had a hopeful conversation with a couple of new friends about the success they've had with this doctor and diet changes. One had a similar story with her breastfed baby boy, eczema from four to seven months, to be cured in one week by eliminating wheat from her diet, a success story I've read so often. Food allergies, candida overgrowth, ph imbalance - I'm not sure where the problem lies, but I'm hoping we can pin it down. To quote a facebook friend of mine (I'll give her the indirect credit because I'm not sure who she was quoting), "The evidence for nutritional therapy is becoming so strong that if the doctors of today don’t become nutritionists, the nutritionists will become the doctors of tomorrow."

I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, I'll also keep searching for that cellphone with my pictures that's gone MIA? 

For good measure, I'll leave you with one more picture of my boy who's wrung my heart out so often lately. Sleeping in Mommy's arms, because nowhere else will do when you're not feeling so good.

Detective work, Mama style.

I feel like a genius!

I may have just figured out Max's mysterious rash. I hope.

Max has had this rash for a month and a half. In the last week of November he had a small rash on his back quickly cover his whole little body, like a switch had been flicked. After a week of it getting progressively worse and him getting progressively grumpier, and I'm assuming itchier, the poor little guy, I finally went to the doctor with him.

I have eczema, and the prompt diagnosis was that it must be eczema. I've gone through the last month racking my brain for what it could be, refusing to believe Max has a lifelong eczema we have to treat with frequent coatings of hydrocortisone cream.

Through my experience with eczema, I've learned it's essentially an allergy related rash. In that way, as allergies are, it's also partly hereditary. External factors like fragrances can irritate it, but it really comes down to diet CAUSING it. For me anyway.

When I was little I had a food allergy list soooo long, I remember it embarrassed me when babysitters came over. Most of those I have grown out of, but if I now have a lot of one of those things, like milk, my skin will let me know. As an adult I've often thought of attempting to eradicate dairy and/or wheat completely from my diet, two of the most common allergens, to see if I could 'cure' the eczema altogther, but apparently it doesn't bother me enough to push me to that dedication. I have attempted to move loosely towards a Paleo diet though, a diet composed of meat and veggies and a bit of fruit. Troy likes Paleo from a fitness standpoint, what Paleo is well-known for, where the allergy factor interests me. The Paleo diet is based on the theory that our bodies have not evolved to where our methods of food 'gathering' have. Our bodies do not know what to do with post-agricultural foods like grains and processed food like milk from other animals. Paleo theory actually points to grains as carriers of lectins, poisonous cancer causing agents. This is why these foods need to be cooked before eaten, but even cooking leaves trace amounts that build up in our systems. Paleo of course also eliminates the junk pretend food, the processed chemical concoctions we try to pass off as food.

So in that vein in my search for what was suddenly bothering my poor little man, I came across this article on La Leche discussing food allergies and breastfed babes. It's a really good article, you should read it. It's hard to summarize, but here are a few sections that stood out to me:

"The earlier and more often a food is ingested, the greater likelihood it has of becoming an allergen. Babies tend to be most allergic to the foods they have been offered first. While a baby is exclusively breastfed, he is only exposed to the foods his mother eats and secretes in her milk, so his exposure to potential allergens is minimized.

Protection from allergies is one of the most important benefits of breastfeeding. The incidence of cow's milk allergies is up to seven times greater in babies who are fed artificial baby milk instead of human milk.

Breastfeeding protects against allergies in two ways. The first and most obvious reason breastfed babies have fewer allergies is that they are exposed to fewer allergens in the first months of life. They aren't given formula based cow's milk or soy products. Less exposure to these foods means less chance of allergy later on.

..sensitive babies may react to cow's milk in their mothers' diet. Small amounts of cow's milk protein may appear in a mother's milk and provoke a response in her baby, even if the mother herself is not allergic to cow's milk. If there is a family history of milk allergies, a mother may prefer to avoid dairy products in her diet as well as not offering them directly to her baby."

So to defend against the food allergies Max seemed to be exhibiting (or so I thought), it encouraged me to continue to exclusively breastfeed and delay solids for Max until even 9-12 months to expose him to as few allergens as possible, and eliminate dairy, the food that tops all food as an allergen, from my own diet. After all, what you won't do for yourself, you will do for your kids!

But wait. While I think all of this is very interesting and wanted to pass along, tonight I realized it might not be pertinent to Max at all!

Tonight, I was lathering Max with the hydrocortisone I detest so much (I have a long history of being bitter that despite my healthy choices my skin remains dependant on the stuff, let alone using it on my perfect little babe). And I realized, he had NO RASH AT ALL where his diaper goes. His little bum was as soft and clear as only a baby bum can be, and there was a distinct line on his back where the rash stopped. I turned him over and of course there on his thighs were two more lines where the rash stopped. So that meant... that the rash was caused by his clothes! And his bedding!

Really? I didn't notice this before?

About a month and a half ago I had bought a big bottle of this natural (truely, not green-washed) anti-bacterial soap called Thieves. Which I love. It's made of ingredients like cloves, rosemary, lemon, and cinnamon that disinfect without alcohol and harsh chemical antibacterials, and protect against germs as well. I use a capful as soap in the water when I mop the floor, I have a handwash with it, and a waterless hand sanitizer of it. I used to just have a small bottle of it and add it occasionally to the laundry on particularily gross loads like the boys socks. It smells good though and I figured we could use the anti-bacterial nature in more of our things, so since it's fragrance doesn't bother my sensitive skin I didn't think twice about adding it to all of our laundry loads once I got the large bottle.

I guess there can be too much of a good thing.

I must be the most stunned person in the world. But if this is it, and it really is just the soap that's too harsh for his delicate little skin, I am going to be sooo relieved. Deliriously happy.

Tomorrow, I'm going to rewash all of his bedding and clothes and see how we make out. Here's crossing my fingers!