Friday, January 3, 2014

GAPS Intro: Day 7 Stage 2/3 ish

Pretty much the same ole thing around here. Add hungry grumpy children. DD5 still has her dark eye circles...but now I am reading how this is also a side effect of detox. She did develop tiny blood spots on top of the eye circles 3 nights ago. This was also said to be detox. We are all peeing a ton- and it is an urgent type of pee. This has been said to be detox too. Is it? I have no clue. I'm basically grumpy and cynical so I want to flip the bird at all things GAPs right now.

Because I have IgG results for DD5, we are holding off on introducing eggs and dairy--per the GAPs protocol, the egg yolks (raw) would have been introduced several days ago. Some GAPs enthusiasts (no really, they do exist) say intro the eggs anyway because they are important for healing. But then I argue that I have no way of knowing if she is having a reaction to the egg or not. We are fortunate not to have serious allergic reactions to any foods (that we know of) but this is yet another sign for me that DD5 needs true gut healing- not just to avoid the offending foods. Keep in mind, she is deficient in B12 and D...dangerously low in both of those. We normally incorporate plenty of those vitamins (D is a hormone but you know what I mean) into our diet. Yet, she's lacking it. So that is her leaky gut at play.

I got bored and frustrated on day 5 when we were basically ready for Stage 3 but by all GAPs people opinions we were going to fast. This could be true, but I refuse to sit on Stage 2 for another 14 days until we start introducing dairy and eggs What if we never want to eat dairy again? Eggs would be nice to have back....but still. I just don't believe these two food groups are requirements to gut healing. Surely adding some raw veggie juice would have its place here (That is stage 4 by the way). But I am not the expert creator of GAPs and if I keep mucking it up, I'll never know if GAPs worked for us.

So...I compromised. Stage 3 allows nut flour/butter pancakes made with squash. These puppies wont turn out without eggs so I just took almond meal and added hot water with a spot of coconut oil and honey. The kids lapped it up like mad. However, a few hours later DD5 had puffy eyes and a pink face...DH had also allowed her to use the iPad so I don't know if that was to blame. To be sure I tested almond flour again today- I mixed almond flour, coconut oil and a little salt with water and poured it into muffin cups and baked. No seriously- I did! The kids ate it up. I thought it tasted like a dry packet of cream of wheat poured straight into my mouth. But they each had 4 muffins. No sugar!

Finally made a beef broth that DD3 would eat. I added red peppers (which are Stage 1 but the 30 day What Can I eat on gaps doesn't say this! Tsk tsk!) and large chunks of celery during the cooking stage. I removed the celery (Stage 4) and served it with salmon broken up. DD3 slurped her bowl. DD5 scooped the salmon out and sipped a little broth. She's still hungry and has the same symptoms as yesterday post almond flour. So either she's still hungry (could be a possibility) or she's reacting to almonds. Almonds were NOT rated on her IgG so this is a bit of a shock. Back to Stage 2. Which is driving me crazy...DD3 whines nonstop- about everything and follows me around to whine some more. I have gotten to the point where I have to shut and lock my door so I can catch my breath. I don't know how much longer I can handle the starving.

Can't turn back now...onward we go. Hiding out inside the house so I don't have to deal with a DD3 meltdown. DD5 is just mopey and sluggish. I can tolerate that--it just pulls on my heart strings.

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