Part of me is elated that we are half way through & cannot believe the progress we have made. Hayden is eating eggs every day ~ scrambled, hard boiled, baked in cookies, brownies, pancakes, taffy, meringues, and every other possible way we can think of.
He is also beginning his mornings with yogurt smoothies as his dairy dose is ever increasing to the point it was too much yogurt to eat in one sitting, so we plop it in the blender with some fresh fruit and he loves every last bit of it!
Hayden is just arriving at a full serving of wheat and must eat 3 servings per day. I have never seen a child so excited to eat pretzels every day. He is also enjoying whole wheat pasta and bread. Today I roamed the aisles of Whole Foods filling my cart with new wheat products for him to have. It was the most bizarre experience for me & I most certainly looked as if I had never shopped before. I stood in the cracker aisle with my eyes glazed over, unsure which crackers to pick. I mean after all I want him to love them. I grabbed so many items, read the ingredients, placed them in my cart & then back on the shelves, then back in my cart again. Is this really happening? Am I really taking wheat home for my son to eat? Everything about it felt so foreign. After-all, for the past ten years I had become the Whole Foods master of the gluten free products. I could walk through blindfolded and know where every single item was. I had been doing so for a decade.
We started introducing peanut two weeks ago and as the serving size slowly increases, you should see the look of pure excitement as Hayden tastes the peanut butter in his mouth. He is overcome with happiness and cannot wait to eat as much as he wants someday soon.
Sesame has been our trickiest of all the foods. We have been working on it for months and with continued mouth swelling, vomiting and tightness in the throat we have decided to keep the dose VERY minute, but still give it every day. Hayden no longer reacts to it, but we will not increase it until we have finished dairy. I do not want to overload his immune system. Knowing we are on a time frame to be out of here, I wanted to prioritize and felt that if Hayden still has sesame and tree nut allergies when we leave then those are easy enough to avoid if he needed to. Although, we have every intention of flying back and forth every two weeks to continue working with our healer until he is 100% allergy free. You don't start this intense process and quit before it's complete, at least I won't.
As for Hayden's broken wrist he is in a cast until Jan 6th. I am positive, with all of my heart this was an unanswered prayer. When Hayden went for his MRI I prayed that the images would be clear and we would be sent home to resume all activity. I was devastated to learn that it was in fact broke. "What? But he plays hockey, that's all he has right now, that's his everything."
I learned that time away from hockey has allowed my boy to have more time with his sisters, loving them and bonding with them in ways he could not if he was on the ice 4 nights per week. He has hugged me more in the past months than I can ever remember and we have laid together in my bed talking about life ~ something we could not do when he was getting home at 9 pm. each night. He is less tired, therefore less run down & I know this is a direct relation to how beautifully he has been dealing with all these foods. Even our healer says he is, at this rate, the fastest person to go through the process. Getting the cast off and returning to the ice will be bittersweet for me. I have learned to be thankful for the broken wrist, for it gave our family more than we could have ever received from hockey.
Amanda
"God's answers are wiser than our prayers." ~ Unknown
Self-discipline, charm, integrity, silliness and confidence are the heart of my sweet Ava.
My sweet boy Hayden, now ten-years-old is the most intuitive, compassionate and emotionally wise person I have ever met. He was born an old soul and has forever been the