May 2nd was Sarah’s gastroenterologist appointment.  The doctor recommended that I add back everything except dairy and soy back to my diet.  She also had me collect some specimens to have tested and if they come back clear than she recommends an x-ray.

Last weekend we went to the strawberry farm and Ted and I filled a bucket while Pat and Sarah supervised.

Sarah had her first solid food on May 7th.  Ted fed her her first bite of rice cereal.

Sarah is very mobile now.  I remember Ted went through a phase where I could sit him down and he would stay right there and happily play with his toys because he was not yet crawling.  We seem to have skipped that phase with Sarah.  Any time I put her down on her back she flips right over and starts scootching away, backward.  She can do a plank and is already pushing up on her knees.

Also, she got her second bottom tooth this week.

This past weekend I got Sarah all dressed up in her baptism outfit and took a million photos.  Here are some of my favorites.

Also have to mention she sat up on her own for the first time.  Each time is less than a minute, but she is on her way!

During this time Sarah used the Exersaucer for the first time.  I also set up the Jumperoo, but she is not really into jumping yet.  We also have been sitting her in her high chair at the dinner table when we eat.  I am pretty sure she is totally ready to start actually eating with us, but we are going to wait until six months to introduce food.

She has been practicing up with a probiotic though.   I put the powder on a spoon and she eats it right up.  Her digestive woes continue.  After a very promising looking week, I tried adding wheat back in to my diet.  It didn’t go well, so I cut it back out again.  Of course I still don’t even really know if these diaper issues are allergy related or just coincidence.  May 2nd I will be taking her to a pediatric gastroenterologist.  Hopefully I will get some answers or at least some direction.

Also during this time we headed up to New England for Easter, Sarah’s 6am Baptism, and a birthday party for Ted.  Sarah got to meet tons of her family for the first time.

Sarah has continued to grow at that crazy baby rate, where we wake up in the morning and suddenly she looks like she is twice the size she was the night before.  The allergy update is that the diaper situation got much worse when I cut out soy, which I suspect could be due to the coconut products that I used to replace the soy products that formerly replaced the dairy products. Despite all that she continues to look very healthy.  She is very alert, and she is very happy.

I think there is a chance that we finally have the situation under control, since I decided to cut out the top 8 allergens and more.  Would you like to see the insane list of things I am not eating?  Milk, soy, eggs, wheat, fish, shell fish, tree nuts, peanuts (those are the top 8), as well as corn, coconut, tomatoes, strawberries, bananas, pears, spinach, and citrus.  So I have a long way to go to figure out which of these things is giving her a reaction.  Ted and his cousin Abby are both sensitive to bananas and pears, that is why I have cut those out.

And the next thing people ask is what can I eat and/or have I considered switching her to formula.  I can eat a variety of rice products, they make some very good brown rice pasta, rice stir fry noodles, rice crackers, Rice Chex.  And I can eat sunflower seeds, olive oil, canola oil, and palm fruit oil.  As well as oatmeal, meat, and potatoes, sweet potatoes, and lots of fruits and vegetables.  Honestly eating this way is way easier than doing Atkins (which I did about ten years ago.)  I can eat potatoes people!

So I am not considering switching her to formula.  If she seemed in pain or was not adequately gaining weight of course I would be discussing with a doctor what would be the best course of action for her, but we are not there.  Never mind the whole breast is best argument, or the insane cost of hypoallergenic formula, or the pain in the butt of getting up at night to feed a bottle, etc… The super expensive hypoallergenic formula is 45% corn syrup solids.  That is the source of carbohydrates in it.  It also contains coconut and soy.  I am really, really, hoping that it never comes to that.

Here are some photos from last weekend, when Gram and Pops came to visit.

Sarah took about a day to warm up to them, but then she spent the rest of the visit getting to know them and snuggling and chatting.  She is going through that phase where she just wants Mom and Dad and when I pass her to any of my friends, if she gets a look at their face she  starts crying.  So I was very glad that she got over her initial reluctance and accepted her grandparents.

Sarah has her first cold and it is a doozy!  She had a fever at midnight on Monday and then it returned Tuesday along with what I thought was a new rash.  I took her to the doctor who said that the rash was just her eczema acting up due to the fever.  They decided to give her an RSV test just in case.  The test came back positive.  RSV is just a bad virus, which causes bronchiolitis in infants.  Bronchiolitis is just a fancy way of saying wheezing and tight breathing.

That first night with the fever is the only time she has been really fussy.  Yesterday she was coughing a ton and that was freaking me out, but she calmed down and slept the rest of the day away.  So far today she has seemed a little better than yesterday.  The doctor warned me that day five would be the worst.  I am not sure when the beginning is though, do I start with her first cough or the fever?

One of her favorite things to do is stare at her hands.  And whenever I put her on her back, she rolls right onto her side.

On the allergy front, I realized that olive oil cooking spray has soy in it, as well as the vitamin I was taking.  Hopefully now I really have cut out soy.

Last week Sarah had some skin issues that I would call eczema, but it has cleared up for the most part.  Also it had been two weeks since there had been any blood in her diaper, so I was thinking we must have that under control.   Not so much.  Yesterday there was blood again.  I had been avoiding anything spicy because that seemed related and I was only allowing myself tiny amounts of tomato sauce.  Well yesterday I had a tiny bit of tomato sauce.  I also cleaned up some of Ted’s milk and then touched my own food.  Is it possible I had traces of milk on my hand?  Or is it some other allergen?

Sigh.  I have decided to continue on dairy free, and also try cutting out tomatoes completely, as well as soy.  The soy because that is what the doctor recommended to eliminate if just dairy didn’t work.  I find the soy hard to believe because I eat similar amounts of it every day and she only has reactions every ten to fourteen days.  Cutting out soy will be even harder than cutting out dairy, because it is in almost all processed foods, including vegan chocolate chips.

She has changed around her schedule and instead of being cranky during the evening, she has been cranky in the morning.  This is rather inconvenient since we are usually in the car or out with friends in the mornings.  I get the impression that she is sleepy, but doesn’t want to sleep through the action.

She has been taking super long naps in the afternoon, which probably leads to her waking up more at night.  On the days that she is up more in the afternoon she sleeps better at night.

She has been talking more this week.  She especially likes to talk to her toys but has started talking more to us too.  One day I had her in the bouncy seat in the kitchen and she was looking at a toy dragonfly making a sound exactly like a mourning dove.

She holds her head up on her own all the time and definitely reaches for toys and bats at them.  When she does tummy time she is good at holding herself up when she feels like it.

Things have been so busy around here lately that I didn’t even realize I had missed Sarah’s ninth weekiversary post until I went to write the tenth!  Sarah’s ninth weekiversary landed on Pat’s birthday this year.  We had two celebrations, one with Auntie Christine and one on the actual day.

The weekend before last Auntie Christine came and she and Ted made a cookie cake for Pat’s birthday with dairy-free chocolate chips!  She also went to Whole Foods with me and helped me pick out some dairy-free items while wrangling the kids.

Wednesday I took Sarah in for her two-month check up.  She is in the 80th percentile for height and weight.  Other than some dry skin and cradle cap, she is doing fine.

That night, which was Pat’s actual birthday, I made him pizza with dairy-free cheese and an angel food cake with white frosting and sprinkles this year instead of m&ms.  He and Ted opened his presents together, including a new book from Auntie Kristen called Goodnight iPad.  Ted liked the book but is still concerned over the grandmother’s choice to throw all the “gadgets” out the window.

This weekend Grampa came to visit.  He and Ted made cupcakes together and ooey gooey critters.  We all went to Marbles Kids Museum together on Sunday before watching the Super Bowl.

Sarah has fussy days and sleepy days.  There is no telling what kind of day it will be.  Yesterday she was pretty fussy and threw up all over me at playgroup.  Today she has been sleepy and fell asleep in the arms of another mom at our MOMS club meeting.  You just never know.