Hello Dairy

Melanie went without dairy for about four weeks. The first three of those weeks were hard to decipher because she got a cold. That always knocks her back at least 2.5 weeks. Her lightbulb clicked back on last Tuesday, and she's been super chatty and a bucket of bubbles since then. I also choose to believe that her seizure in the wee hours on Friday, January 25 helped hit the "reset" button, so we've seen the usual language explosion after she recovered.
Combing through all the swings she's gone through in those weeks, we never really saw a measurable difference in her when she was casein free. Since casein should be completely out of the system in at least three weeks (probably more like some days), I figured we were seeing a pretty pure picture, once she had recovered from the cold. We gave her a "challenge" with a serving of cheese last Saturday, and waited and watched for three days. No changes whatsoever. So yay!! She can have dairy again! Whew-- I was getting sick of that. Milk is surprisingly hard to avoid on ingredient lists. Plus, I never really knew what exactly I was feeding her with the few dairy substitutions we tried. I may still try avoiding too much dairy in the evening. She might have been sleeping better when we first weaned it in the evenings.

She has been gluten free for a few weeks now, and we're still unsure of any changes with that. Gluten can take much longer to completely leave the system, so this trial might take a bit longer. It really has not been very hard at all. Thanks to Karen for sharing her all-purpose flour mix with me: it really was the kick-start I needed. Melanie loves Karen's bread recipe, the chicken nuggets I made were delicious!, and it's pretty easy to find suitable GF snacks. I've purchased a few boxed/bagged snacks, but mostly it's forcing us to go more simple, natural and healthy. I'm making popcorn regularly, she loves Beanitos chips, guacamole, nuts, seeds, carrots (she could eat a whole bag in one sitting), and now she can have the occasional string cheese. GF pasta is super easy, tacos and tonight's turkey burgers are easy- she never ate them in tortillas or buns anyway. I'm going to try a GF pizza crust some night... So many people are gluten free now, that it's not so hard to do at all. Labeling is convenient, finding entire aisles devoted to GF is common, and I wonder if some companies have just decided it's more profitable to remove any traces of gluten their products uses to have, because enough people would stop buying them otherwise. If we need to keep gluten out of Melanie's diet (and maybe mom will try it too?), I think it will be very doable. I know birthdays and such may be an issue, but I already have a plan for those.

I'm looking forward to any answers we may get in a couple weeks when we travel to MN for a neurology appointment and then overnight EEG. I'm suspicious of possible subclinical and nocturnal things happening. But if I'm right, please pray that we won't let that scare us into bumping up her meds more and losing the great strides she's been making lately in her development. If anything, we need to lower them more so she can come alive even more!