Nightweaning, day 10 (is this the end?)

Yea! We made it 10 nights of nightweaning! We really have two more nights to go, because I stretched out the second phase a couple days due to Dave returning to work. But I couldn't have chosen a more ideal time to work on nightweaning! Last night she woke up crying and took a while to get back to sleep, but I managed without picking her up, and it only took about 10 minutes to get her back to sleep, and I didn't feel bad because I was attentively helping her. I my rare episodes of desperation where I allowed her to cry for a while, she ended up throwing up and making me feel like a terrible mother. This way I was able to achieve the end goal of nightweaning while still feeling as though I am an attentive parent! Yea! Win-win!

And today is officially day one of our diet! Lacy has done really well, but hates the rice milk. Too bad she won't get any cow's milk for a few weeks! Actually I spoke too soon-- Lacy came out to me with chocolate in her mouth. I have no idea where she got it from! Dave is making her spit it out. Poor thing, no chocolate for her, but it's for the best. The diet is actually not a gluten free diet, but is an elimination diet where we take out many common allergens, and after a week add each allergen in massive amounts to determine her allergies. We are limited to rice, oats and barley as our cereal grains, for fruits we cannot have citrus or fruits canned in syrup, we are allowed all vegetables except corn and peas, most meats are allowed, but no over processed meats or smoked meats like lunchmeats, ham or bacon, or dyed meats, for beverages we can have water, single herb tea with honey, or grape, apple or pineapple juice. Snacks are going to be a tough one-- we have have potato chips, rice cakes, or raisins, and for miscellaneous foods we can have honey, homemade vinegar and oil salad dressing, sea salt, pepper , and homemade soup. It limits a lot foods, but because we don't eat a lot of processed foods, it's not going to be much of an adjustment, other than no dairy and no wheat!

We do this diet for days 1-7, and then for each day after that we keep the diet the same and add massive amounts of 8. milk 9. wheat, 10. sugar 11. eggs 12. cocoa 13. dyed foods 14. corn 15. preservatives 16. citrus 17. peanut butter. And if we observe no reaction, we can add that food back into the diet. And we're looking for subtle reactions in heart rate, demeanor, etc, that can indicate an allergy. This is the second diet suggested in Is This Your Child by Doris Rapp.

Today I did a diet-friendly meal that didn't taste yucky! Here's what we had for dinner:

HAMBURGER SOUP

1 lb. ground beef 1 (16 oz.) can tomatoes 2 med. onions, chopped 2 med. carrots, chopped 2 stalks celery, chopped 1/3 c. pearl barley 1/4 c. ketchup 1 tbsp. instant beef bouillon 2 tsp. seasoned salt 1 tsp. dried basil 1 bay leaf Brown ground beef and drain off fat. In large saucepan, stir in remaining ingredients and 5 cups water. Bring to boiling, reduce heat and simmer 1 hour. Also can be cooked in crock pot. Brown ground beef and drain. Add ingredients to crock pot and cook all day. Other vegetables can be added like shredded zucchini.

I substituted the ketchup (not safe for diet because of HFCS) with one can of tomato paste and I increased the barley to 1/2 cup, and I used purple prairie barley instead of pearled, which is much more nutritious than regular barley because it doesn't have to be stripped of its nutrients by pearling.