A Whole New World

Yesterday Ellie performed a most typical toddler task, getting her fingers into our sticker bucket. Here is a picture of what resulted:


For those of you who recognize it, yes it is the sheet of millions of teddy bear heads from Lakeshore. This is quite significant. Why? Because not long ago the corn in the sticker adhesive would have sent Ellie into a full blown FPIES reaction within a matter of minutes or hours. For the first time I did not have to panic. She had no reaction (though I did remove them all immediately).

This is a whole new world for us. This is a sign that her body is healing from the inside out, and confirmation that the formula was keeping her from progressing. And let's not forget the advance in fine motor skills she needed in order to pick each of those little bear heads off of the paper and place them on her leg.

In the last few weeks Ellie has colored with crayons, wrote on her body with markers, played with stickers, and even touched plain old playdough. All with no reaction.

She still has limitations (obviously), and we still must be diligent with what she is exposed to (Bandaids still give her a rash), but this is MOST noteworthy of progress and we are VERY pleased to see her little body begin to take care of itself. All from the inside out.

Just to Wipe a Butt

Diapers have been a problem for Ellie, well...always. If we don't give her frequent baths (in baking soda) and use very minimal wipes, she gets burning red rashes almost instantly. Her poor intestines and poo are so painful already, and then to have to wipe her with a cloth that burns is horrible. This week I bought the generic Walmart brand diapers to try, and within 24 hours she had a flaming, painful rash. This time I noticed that it looked just like her corn reaction when she had the patch testing done. Coincidence? I think not. So frustrating! Its not like diapers are cheap! I realized that I am going to have to switch to cloth. Hooray.

I am not really sure why I haven't switched before now. *pause* Who am I kidding? OK. Actually there is a list of reasons why I have not switched. I don't have the time to research the different types, I am fearful of the cost, I don't have the time to add diaper washing duty to my list, it sounds very inconvenient, the thought of changing an FPIES reaction poop in a cloth diaper does NOT sound appealing, I have visions of poop everywhere, my learning curve can not possibly go steeper to add one more thing, and on and on and on.

Alas, we can no longer continue to go out of the house without baby wipes, and the reality is I spend a ton on expensive disposables so that she can wear them. So chalk one more up to FPIES - we move on to cloth.