Food intolerance Manifestations

for your enjoyment: 

a picture I found of me leaping (unsuccessfully, I might add) over a stream during the mud run. isn't my outfit super attractive?

Over the last few years, I've learned to pay attention to my body and can usually identify when I'm reacting to something I ate. I've also learned to watch the Little Miss for her reactions.

That said, I still sometimes miss things.

My reactions have evolved from stomach pain and throat swelling. Now I get eczema under my wedding ring (weird, I know) and in my scalp. It took me awhile to figure out that the rash under my rings wasn't poison ivy like I originally thought, but directly related to what I eat. It also took me awhile to make the connection between the itchy "dandruff" and what I eat. Thankfully my hair hides most of the damage, but I do go around looking like I have a bad case of dandruff if I haven't been eating right.

With LMS, it's a bit trickier. Some things are fairly obvious, like intestinal issues, but others are less cut and dried. Changes in her behavior sometimes don't click right away with me, even though I know (and have known for some time) that her behavior is greatly influenced by what she eats.

Recently I've finally made another connection that has eluded me for months.

This past fall LMS and I went on a road trip with my sister for a few days and LMS started coughing. I chalked it up to the dry air in the car (I always get dehydrated when road tripping) and when we got home I turned her humidifier on each night and the cough went away.

The cough re-surfaced around Christmas, which coincided with another road trip, and some actual winter weather. LMS got sick on New Years, and even though she got better, the cough hung around. Last week she got a bit sick again and the cough evolved from a dry, unproductive cough (so annoying to listen to) to a pleghmy cough. I'd been thinking about taking her to the doctor, but with the phlegm and cold, the doctor would just say to keep an eye on things.

I've been praying about how to help her, and I finally made the connection between the cough she had in September and her current cough. And I realized that it wasn't caused by the dry air- it was caused by eating things that don't agree with her. When we road trip, we are a lot more lenient about what we eat since we invariably have to eat at restaurants at least part of the time. We hadn't started GAPS yet when we went on the road trip with my sister, but we were pretty close. When we returned home, we went back to eating more carefully and her cough cleared up because she wasn't eating the offending foods any more, not because the humidifier made a difference.

At Christmas we cheated on GAPS while traveling to my sister's, and we've been cheating in one way or another (for one reason or another) ever since. LMS's cough hasn't been able to clear up because of the continued cheating.

Yeah, it's only taken me since September to realize that coughing is one of LMS's food intolerance manifestations. I'm not always the fastest on the uptake, that's for sure.

My super-sensitive sense of smell seems to be disappearing (thankfully!). I only have a couple weeks left before I hit the second trimester and I'm really hoping the nausea and lack of appetite clear up then so I can start cooking food again, which will enable us to get back on the GAPS wagon.  I can't wait for LMS's cough to go away....