Our Amos Wilder sure has taken us on a wild ride this past year and a half.
We've had a challenging time pin-pointing his numerous food allergies from the beginning.
As an infant, Amos started to show the initial signs of food intolerance around 3 weeks... rash all over his body, lotsss of diarrhea- like, literally 12 poopy diapers a day- and he went from sleeping 7 hour stretches for a week or two back down to waking up with gas and an upset tummy every 2.5-3 hours.
We've had a challenging time pin-pointing his numerous food allergies from the beginning.
As an infant, Amos started to show the initial signs of food intolerance around 3 weeks... rash all over his body, lotsss of diarrhea- like, literally 12 poopy diapers a day- and he went from sleeping 7 hour stretches for a week or two back down to waking up with gas and an upset tummy every 2.5-3 hours.
This went on for a couple weeks before we realized something wasn't normal about this kid and, with the agreement of our pediatritian, I cut out numerous foods from my diet for the sake of breastfeeding him- because, if you don't already know, whatever mama eats baby will eat via breastmilk in some form. So I cut out pretty much everything that might possibly be a problem. I mean, like allll the foods... I avoided dairy, soy, eggs, gluten, nuts, fish, rice, and corn. It was definitely challenging, to say the least, but by and large baby Amos began to get better! His rash cleared up, poops calmed down and started sleeping slightly better- but he was still a baby after all, so you can't expect too much, there.
Through this whole process, my husband and I wanted to stay as level-headed about it all as possible. As a breastfeeding mom, if he had a bad night, I couldn't help but feel like it was my fault and I must have eaten something to cause him this pain. So I had to keep reminding myself that we were doing the best we can, I was doing the best I could, and overall baby Amos was just fine. There were a couple things that made life uncomfortable for him at times, but overall he was healthy and doing great.
You would think he might be a skinny little baby or something, but no, that guy chunked up real good, real fast! Look at his squishy face!
He's always been in the top 70-90% for weight and height so the babe was clearly not lacking in anything.
As he grew older and we started introducing more solids to his diet, we were looking forward to introducing each of the foods I had been avoiding by giving them directly to him and watching to see how he reacted to them. I think he was around 9 months when I first started giving him the "scary foods" one by one. Literally, every time I was terrified by what might possibly happen. But again, if it was negative, he basically just got a rash, threw up all over the place (yes, every time), couldn't sleep for a couple nights and had a couple rounds of diarrhea- pretty much all the same symptoms from his early days. And although they were TERRIBLE in the moment to experience as a mom- watching my baby's body react negatively to good food- on the scale of 0 to cancer he was still doing just fine.
We eventually tested everything on the list and found that he did just fine with fish, rice, and corn! But he had a hard time with just about everything else. Poor baby guy.
We decided to get a blood test done to show his body's reactions to food in the form of "true allergies." That term is important because "true allergies" are different from an "intolerance," as described by our doctor. Our bodies attack the foods in different ways in each instance. Both are in the category of allergies, but an intolerance is often outgrown, and true allergies are not. Apparently that's why they're called "true"?? *shrug*
Anywayyyyyys, we went and got his blood tested just a couple weeks ago to find if there were true allergies present. And as much as I had hoped I was just a crazy person in all this, it turns out he is officially and truly allergic to dairy, eggs, gluten, nuts and sesame with a possible intolerance to soy.
So why do I share all of this with you?
Maybe I just want your pity. ha. Feel free to assume that if you would like.
But for reals, that's NOT what this is about.
I wanted to write this out for all of the internet as an act of faith. Faith, because I believe with all of my heart that not only is my God able to heal my baby Amos from each and every one of these allergies, but that He will heal him from each and every one of these allergies.
The doc says it doesn't look good... he says my baby Amos is "highly allergic," "at risk of anaphylactic reactions," that this kind "doesn't get better with time, if anything they will get worse." There is no medical help for his allergies, just an epi pen on hand in case something terrible happens.
The doc says it doesn't look good... he says my baby Amos is "highly allergic," "at risk of anaphylactic reactions," that this kind "doesn't get better with time, if anything they will get worse." There is no medical help for his allergies, just an epi pen on hand in case something terrible happens.
But ya'll, THAT is the perfect place for my God to step in and show off his goodness and healing power and create a testimony for Amos and me and our whole family.
I believe that with my whole heart and I look forward to sharing his story of healing with you all in the future!
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