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Raising a Child with Food Restrictions – Part 1

No grains?? None? Uhhh…I think we have a problem.

This is Part 1 of a series describing our experiences with identifying and managing food restrictions for our baby daughter and how our journey eventually led us to the likely cause…FPIES (Food Protein-Induced Enterocolitis Syndrome).

From very early on, our daughter has been a good eater and a good sleeper. After being exclusively breastfed for her first six months (and all the way through to 12 mths), we started to introduce solid foods into her diet. Per the common recommendations, we started out with watered down rice cereal (using breast milk). Over the course of the first week or so, we gradually thickened it up to make it a little more manageable. She did okay initially, but after about ten days or so…while my wife was out of town for business (of course!)…our daughter got sick (vomitted) for pretty much the first time since her birth.

I had given her a little bit of rice cereal with her dinnertime feeding that night and put her down to bed around 6pm. Shortly before I was about to give her the last evening feeding at 9p, she proceeded to vomit all over herself and her crib. Awesome. After I got her and her crib all cleaned up, she perked up and took a full bottle, before passing out for the night. Not really sure what to make of it, the next morning at about 6:30a, I gave her another serving of rice cereal with her morning bottle and all seemed fine. Once again, shortly before her mid-morning bottle (~9a), she vomited all over herself and her crib. Now this started to worry me a bit, and after talking it over with my wife on the phone, I decided to take her to the pediatrician for a visit that afternoon.

At the pediatrician, I explained the situation and gave her as much info as I could remember regarding our daughter’s feeding schedule and the timing of the vomiting. Her response was probably one of the most common that parents will hear in this situation…that it was probably just a stomach bug. In her defense, this is probably the correct guess 98% of the time. She recommended that we avoid the rice cereal for a few days, and then reintroduce. Okay…no problem. That makes sense.

As it turns out, a few days later meant we were now on vacation in Santa Fe, New Mexico with my wife’s family. After making the eight hour roadtrip to Santa Fe and getting all settled in, we decided to try again. We offered rice cereal with a lunchtime bottle and our daughter gobbled it up. All seemed fine, so we packed up the family and headed to the historic downtown Santa Fe for lunch and a little shopping. Shortly after arriving, she began vomiting. After the third round of vomitting in less than 20 minutes, we headed back to our vacation home to get her cleaned up. She proceeded to vomit all the way home…and pretty much every 10-15 minutes…for almost three hours.

About two hours in, she was getting lethargic and was absolutely exhausted. We called our pediatrician’s answering service (of course, it was a Sunday), and explained the situation. We were told our main concern was dehydration. Since we were at a much higher altitude (7,000ft) than our home in Phoenix (1,000ft), this was even more of a concern. Ultimately, we decided to take her to a very good local hospital that had a pediatrics unit (thank you Santa Fe Christus St. Vincent!). Fortunately, while waiting nearly an hour for a doctor, she began to perk up and show signs of recovery. By the time the doctor showed up, she was starting to smile and get her color back. The doctor was a bit perplexed, but once again, we were told it was probably a stomach bug and to take a few more days off from the cereal. Since her primary nourishment was still coming from breast milk, and since we were really just getting started with “solid” food, going a few days without cereal didn’t really concern us. Again, we felt that made sense…but we were now definitely sensing that there was something more to all of this.

So, where do we go from here?

To be continued…

Be sure to also check out Part 2 of this series, and if you have any questions about how we are dealing with food restrictions, please let us know. Also, please join in the conversation on our website, on Twitter, and on Facebook to share your own stories of dealing with childhood dietary issues.

Rethinking Infant Immunization Schedules

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Leading up to the birth of our daughter, one of the major decisions that my wife and I discussed and researched at length was the immunization schedule that we would follow. Now let me be clear from the very start here…we are not anti-vaccine. Not even close. My wife is a nurse and I am an engineer and we definitely understand, respect, and value modern medicine. However, we were concerned with overwhelming our beautiful baby girl’s body with too many vaccine doses a little too quickly.

When it comes to immunizations, one area that gets a lot of press is the potential link to autism. Many autism activists claim that vaccinations cause autism. While scientific medical studies have pretty clearly discounted and ruled out any links between vaccines and autism, the press that it receives helped to raise our overall awareness and curiosity of the possible side effects of immunizations, as well as various other concerns and alternatives.

As such, we did a fair amount of research online, we spoke with friends and family that had similar questions, we spoke with our pediatrician, and we evaluated the various options that were generally accepted by the medical community. We discovered two options that we were comfortable with…follow the standard full vaccination schedule published by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) or a modified full vaccination schedule that spread out the timing of injections. Ultimately, we decided to go with a modified schedule, and after careful consideration and consultation, we chose the schedule recommended by Dr. Bob Sears.

One of the main differences for the vaccination schedule from Dr. Bob is that it defers the Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B shots to age 2-1/2 to 3-1/2, rather than Day 1 (day of birth) and throughout years 1 and 2. While we do believe the Hepatitis shots are important for the long-term health of our daughter, we just did not feel that this was necessary at such a young age. If your child may be in a situation where the risk factors are higher (family member with Hep or living internationally), it may make sense to pull this back in.

Another key distinction is that the various shots and boosters are spread out over an increased number of visits. THIS MEANS YOU WILL NEED TO VISIT YOUR PEDIATRICIAN A LITTLE MORE OFTEN OVER YOUR CHILD’S FIRST YEAR. The necessary interim visits are usually just nurse visits, which allow you to get in and out fairly quickly, and usually do not require a visit charge/co-pay. If you think your job or your proximity to your pediatrician may make these extra visits difficult, then you will probably just want to stick with the AAP schedule. Reaching full immunization is critical to the long-term health and well-being of your child.

Here is the recommended schedule, as illustrated in The Vaccine Book, by Dr. Bob Sears. If you decide that this might be for you, please pick up his book at Amazon or borrow from your local public library.

For your reference, here is a look at the recommended immunization schedule as published by the AAP and CDC for 2011.

Please do your own research, talk things over with your pediatrician, and make the decision that is best for you and your family. Share your thoughts and feedback on this very important topic in the comments below and please let me know of you have any questions.

Recommended Books for New Parents

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Prior to the birth of our daughter, and over the past fifteen months since, we have received great advice and recommendations from friends and family. This website is one of the things we decided to use to share and pass on this wealth of knowledge that we have gathered. As such, we had the following books recommended to us, and we found them to be invaluable. We encourage you to pick them up at your local book store or borrow them from your local public library. Enjoy!

On Becoming Baby Wise – We had this recommended to us by several friends. We followed their sleeping and feeding scheduling guidelines pretty strictly. We also took the notion of full-feeding very seriously, and attribute that to our daughter’s even temperament and relaxed personality. We also believe the Babywise principles played a significant role in her being such a great sleeper (slept thru the night consistently by 8 weeks) and a great eater.
Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child– In addition to the Babywise principles, we used the guidelines in this book to further refine our daughter’s sleep schedules, and to help us manage our expectations.
What to Expect Books – Pregnancy/First Year/Second Year/Toddler – Lots of good nuggets of info in these books that helped us prepare beforehand for the first week at home with our daughter, and then the first several months after birth. These books also really helped us to manage our expectations and provide a sort of roadmap for our daughter’s growth and development. These books have good lists of developmental milestones that you can track each month to make sure the baby is on track with things. These milestones gave us ideas as to when to introduce and work on rolling, crawling, and walking…as well as new toys to keep our daughter engaged. We usually started a month or two before they recommended and we have been ahead of schedule most of the way so far. Be sure to pick up the First Year book while still pregnant, as it will help with post-birth planning (i.e. picking a pediatrician, feeding supplies, breastfeeding, illness, childcare, etc.)
The Happiest Baby on the Block– This DVD has great advice and demos on how to calm your baby and keep your sanity. Some of these methods seem like magic…but most of them worked for us. Definitely good to help ease your anxiety and manage a fussy, overtired baby.
Dare to Discipline – Dare to Discipline is fairly religious, but the overall concepts are sound in helping to set boundaries and expectations with your little one early on. The original version of the book is outdated (circa 1975) in its examples, but the concepts are the same. The newer version should be a little more relevant.
Top 100 Baby Purees – This book provides a great base if you are interested in making your own baby food. All you need is a food processor/blender, a few ice cube trays, and two hours every couple weeks. We did this almost exclusively, with some supplementing with squeezy packs from Ella’s Kitchen, Happy Tot, and Plum while on the go. It is easier than it sounds…at least according to my wife…and you know exactly what you are putting into your babies body (i.e. organic fresh veggies and fruits, no preservatives, etc.).
Making the “Terrible” Twos Terrific! – Making The Terrible Twos Terrific provides good insight on managing the typical behavior of your 18-36-month old child. It includes background on your child’s mental and emotional development during this time period, and gives you a decent understanding of what they are thinking and experiencing. It also explains how to navigate this incredibly formative time period in ways that will have a lasting impact on how your child will act and carry themselves as a teen…and ultimately how they will function as an adult. Definitely a worthwhile read.

Do you have other favorite books that you have found helpful and would recommend? Any thoughts on the books listed above? If so, please share and engage with our community in the comments below. Thanks!

Does Baby Sign Language Really Work?

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Sure…give it a try.

Long before our daughter arrived…or was even on the way…we had heard about friends teaching their babies sign language in order to help them better communicate prior to learning to talk. My wife and I were both intrigued and agreed that this was something that we would try. The sooner we could communicate with our baby the better.

It is widely accepted/known that babies usually have the ability to communicate long before they are able to speak. This often leads to frustration for both the baby and the parents, as this communication breakdown is often at the core of basic fussiness and tantrums. Sign language can often allow parents to quickly understand what is bothering their baby or what the baby needs, and to resolve the situation quickly…which is obviously great for all involved.

We were not quite sure where to begin, so we started in the most logical places…a bookstore, the library, and the Internet. One of the books we picked up was Baby Signing For Dummies. We skimmed through it and learned some good high level information such as when and how to introduce signing to your baby. From there, we mainly relied on some cheat sheets that we pulled from the Internet.

To find these cheat sheets, go to Google, search for “baby sign language chart”, hit the images tab for a bunch of decent options, and print out a few to keep around for reminders. This chart was probably the most useful for us… http://www.babies-and-sign-language.com/images/chartbwbig2.jpg. It is very basic, but has most of the key signs. The ones we use the most are eat/food, milk, more, finished/all done, thank you, and please. We were using mother and father, but then our daughter just started saying those instead (mama/dada). 🙂

We started introducing signing to our daughter pretty early on, around 4-5 months, primarily before/during/after feeding her a bottle. She seemed to start understanding some of the signs around 9-10 months, and she started using some of them herself around 12 months (eat/food, milk, and more)…which was definitely pretty cool. Over the past couple months, we have continued to practice signing with her, and have introduced a few more to her (I love you, please, thank you, and dirty diaper). However, at nearly 15 months, she is now trying to just speak the words instead, so it seems that our days of signing may be limited.

Definitely give it a shot, but please remember to be patient, persistent, and consistent. The first time your baby signs back, it will make it all worth while. Enjoy! …and please share your own stories of success and challenges with teaching sign language to your baby.

Hello & Welcome!!

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Hello…and welcome to A Modern Dad! While there are many great parenting and family-oriented blogs out there, very few are presented from a father’s point of view. I hope that dads will find a voice in A Modern Dad, and I hope that its content is just as useful for moms as well.

While my wife and I both grew up in very loving and supportive families, we are pretty much on our own here in Arizona. Most of my family is in Ohio, my wife’s parents are in San Diego, and her sisters are in Denver. Many of our close friends here in AZ are in a similar situation, living away from family, so we all sort of depend on each other for help and advice as we each raise our families. It is sort of the blind leading the blind sometimes, but most of the advice and support has been priceless. We also reference the online world and a few favorite books when we have questions or come across a new challenge. I felt that A Modern Dad would be a great way to share the advice and research that we collect, along with all the fun and scary experiences that are such a key part of starting and growing a family.

A Modern Dad will give you a small glimpse into our daily lives, while covering topics and issues that we are facing each and every day as we raise our daughter. Much of the content will track along with the immediate experiences of our family and daughter, but we will also be going back to discuss things that we experienced during my wife’s pregnancy, and in the days and months after the birth of our daughter. I will also tackle other forward looking topics that we are thinking about, such as education, as well as immediate issues that our friends and families may be facing. I will share activities and products that are working for us, as well as those that do not, and I encourage my readers to provide feedback on your own experiences and opinions.

Additionally, I plan to bring in guest writers from time to time that span a wide range of topics and subjects that are relevant to parents and families. Some of these writers will be business professionals, some will be subject matter experts, and most will be parents themselves. I hope that this will help to bring some added depth to the content and discussions that we build together.

You will see some advertising on the site to help cover the costs of operation, but I will do my best to keep it useful and relevant to the topics covered here. I will also try to provide appropriate links when I reference specific products and services. I hope that you will find these links useful, rather than a burden.

I will work hard to make this site interesting, relevant, and helpful as you too raise your family. We are just getting started, so it will take some time to build up our content. Thank you for your patience, and please follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and email for all the latest updates. And if you like the site, we would greatly appreciate if you could share it with any and all friends and family that you think might also find the information here useful. Thank you for helping to build the A Modern Dad community!

Welcome and Thanks!!
Brad
brad@amoderndad.com