The short and the very long of allergy test results...

We had allergy testing done today on the 4 youngest children. We got a lot of information. The short of it is that Superman is essentially allergy free, JJ needs to be older before more formal testing but we need to keep him away from proteins for as long as possible (eggs, milk, meat) and keep him on Claritin daily, Faith will be on allergy shots for the next several years at least, and Grace...well...Grace is allergic to lots and lots of food....

The long of it (if you care to keep reading)... I hesitate to write this but in my love for reading others' blogs I have learned that when people share information about unusual things I usually benefit from learning something I did not know before. So, in the hopes to help someone else out there in "e" land, I'll share (because I'm sure you don't really want to know this much about my family lol!!!)

We chose to go see Dr. William Sandy in Holdredge, NE. He is an Internist who is in a Family Practice there who specializes in allergies. He is a Christian and we, after asking many people about him, believed that he would hear us and not just brush away our concerns as being crazy parents:) He was excellent - we spent FOUR HOURS in consultation and testing.

I'll start with the easy one. We had Superman tested in hopes to rule out (or in) something that may be causing his difficulty with learning. What we learned is that he is very allergic to chocolate. So, a food that he gets maybe once a month is off the menu. Chocolate, however, is pretty easy to eliminate from a diet.

JJ was a bit harder. Dr. Sandy did not believe that he was old enough at this point to test for inhalant allergens. His thought was if we find out he is allergic to them he is too young for the allergy shots so why put him through it at this point. As for the food allergies, he thought that since I am nursing Jonathan and he is not being exposed to many foods yet he is would likely test non-allergic to the foods and it would not give us an accurate reading. So, we can test him in about a year. In the mean time, we are to keep him away from proteins (given his bio family history) so no eggs, dairy milk, or meat - and keep him on the Claritin or Zrtec for the congestion.

Faith was yet harder but easy to treat. She is allergic to all of the common inhalant allergens and will be on weekly shots for 16 weeks and retested for a blood level of something or another. She'll likely be on allergy shots for years. We have to check the house for mold (any idea how to do this???) and possibly, if there is water damage in her bedroom, have to recarpet and re-drywall her room. But, that is much easier than....

Grace. When Graces's food allergy results came in I was overwhelmed. I had anticipated she was allergic to milk. MILK! I thought, how will I eliminate all milk?? But then...Whew... The first thing I wondered is, "what CAN this child eat???!!!???" The second thing I thought was, "I have been feeding this child food that is causing her discomfort and most likely many of her ADHD behaviors." The third thought I had was, I'll admit, one of a bit of vengeance. I thought, "well, there you go all of you people who think that her behavior was just bad parenting!!!!!" But, I digress...

Grace is VERY allergic to...

Bananas

Soy

Oranges

Peanuts

Peaches

Strawberries

Tomatoes

and Yeast

Then we add corn, milk, eggs, pork, oats, wheat, tuna, and beef.

Dairy, Soy and Yeast - Dairy, Soy and Yeast - Dairy, Soy and Yeast --- that encompasses about everything!

In fact, the only food that did not react with her at all was white potatoes and pears. I have read the research that ADHD is often coupled with yeast overgrowth and dairy allergy - which is what precipitated us wanting to get her food allergy tested in the first place. So, the citrus fruits and the yeast did not surprise me once my brain stopped spinning (the citrus fruits because that is what we always had to look for in inmate's rooms - hot fruit and bread ferments to make hooch -- YUCK!!!).

So, I think that plain meat and plain vegetables are about what is safe. She hates meat and most vegetables. JJ CAN'T have meat. Buddy WON'T eat most of anything. My husband has a family history of diabetes and shouldn't have carbs. Yeah...just a bit overwhelmed here.

She also had a blood draw to see if she has a gluten problem - I'm not sure what to do if she can't have gluten on top of everything else.

But, I do know that God is big. He knew this from the foundations of the earth. He is Grace's creator and loves her very much. He is not surprised about this. He will faithfully show us the path. And in the mean time, maybe He will use Grace's situation to help someone else's life.

So, there you have it. The short and the very long of the latest adventure of the Elgin family:) If you have any suggestions on foods - PLEASE help me:) And if you just feel led to pray, we covet that too:)

If any of you have read this far - WOW lol!!!!!

Indecision

This week I have been second guessing so many decisions and assumptions. I am so unsure in most areas of parenting each child what the right direction is. We finally decided to have the 4 youngest children all allergy tested. I am not excited about the process but feel that we need to have some answers so we can try to eliminate those allergens from their bodies. Each of our children are so unique. They have their own strengths and their own areas where we plead with God to heal and grow them. Parenting is hard. Adoptive parenting is harder. Parenting adopted children with biological and emotional baggage is...very, very hard. We finally put JJ on an antibiotic thinking that possibly it is a sinus infection...we'll see if he shows improvement. So many questions, so little time to get things done, so very, very little sleep to help give my brain clarity...and a BIG God who has is all sorted:)

We got new carpet!!! Our orange 30 year old dirty nasty stuff is gone and the new carpet is installed. I have enjoyed organizing and getting rid of a lot of things - especially since the two oldest kids' bedrooms were involved lol! JJ loves his siblings and they love being loved on:)
Beautiful completed her 9 months of Bible Instruction Class with a "final" of being asked questions for 40 minutes in front of the church of all that they learned (along with her 9 classmates). She did very well and we are praying that God will solidify what she learned in her heart and grow much fruit. She is so precious to us!


And finally, Beautiful is playing softball again:) She is pitcher and first baseman. We LOVE watching her play and she has a passion for it. Friday she hit a home run! Besides, I'm really not athletic and if I ever tried anything like her sliding here I'd be in a wheelchair lol!

JJ and RSV

JJ has RSV. He has been sick since last Thursday with a fever and difficulty breathing. Monday he had lost 8.5 oz (since Friday) so he was hospitalized for 7 hours for IV fluids as he was refusing bottles, solids, and nursing. It is now Thursday and he has lost another 4 oz. He is nursing OK, not great. He is not eating solids or taking bottles. He is breathing better from the nebulizer treatments - so for that we are very thankful. We are praying and praying that he will get an appetite and eat. I am so glad that we went the route of nursing him since that is the only nutrition that he is getting that this point. Nursing was a tough decision (and not easy to accomplish), but was one for which we have received much blessing. With that said, it is not a topic that one usually openly discusses. I have been surprised at the numbers of people I have been able to encourage or educate about the topic...so I guess sharing "TMI" isn't always a bad thing:)

Thanks for your prayers that JJ would start to eat and gain weight:) God is good...all the time:)

pics!

We love that it is warm enough to eat on the deck again!
We sat JJ on the grass while we planted the garden and he just sat the whole time - Grace and the other kids entertained him:)

The night before Mother's Day was so calm and beautiful. We had a bonfire out by our trampoline. The kids had so much fun:)
JJ is sitting so big now! He started crawling the day before his adoption finalization:)
And...we went to my parents house for Easter. We played and laughed and had fun...in the house due to the rainy and cold weather. But...Easter Day was beautiful and the kids had fun blowing bubbles:)

ADHD

I have written this post in my head many times over the past several months. It is hard to admit when things are hard. I also desire to not embarrass my children. However, I have decided to write about living with a child with ADHD to encourage others who have children with ADHD. For those of you who have followed my blog for a time, you will probably recall comments that I make about our "wild child." We went through screaming for hours, not sleeping, bullying, energy through the roof, utter disobedience, head spinning impulsiveness, and total exhaustion. We really wanted to help her without having to resort to medication. We her her adjusted by a chiropractor monthly for 3 years. We tried lots of supplements, etc. We prayed. We disciplined. We "tomato stake" her (I read a mom's blog on this once about keeping your "difficult" children close to you at all times like one needs to constantly keep a tomato staked to help it grow to it's best potential."

We still do all of these things. But...we also added.........medication. Yes. We did it. We did the unthinkable and give our child Ritalin every day. I had such trepidation. I felt like such a failure as a mom. She was making everyone's life incredibly difficult and was bullying (physically and emotionally) her age mates that have significant abuse histories. They were regressing and beginning to act out themselves. It was time. It was necessary. I felt like I was "sacrificing" her for the sake of the family. During this a wise person told me that it probably was not very comfortable for her to be bouncing off of walls either and perhaps the medication would help her feel better about her...

He was right...

She is a totally different child on the medication. She sits for 30 - 45 minutes at a time now. She LOVES to color!!!! In the past of she sat to color she would be coloring on everyone else's pages, flipping through her book all of the time not finishing a page. Of course getting up all of the time and running around. She doesn't hit the other children as often now. She is more "motherly" and gentle. We have discovered that art is an area of giftedness for her. She draws things that actually look like what she is trying to draw lol! She colors beautifully. She is clearly calmer and feels better about herself (not to mention she isn't being disciplined every 5 minutes - that must help lol!!) I will admit that she continues to be the child we have to keep our eye on the most lol!

For those of you wondering what we have done...here you go.
1) We maintain chiropractor visits every 1 - 2 months. This helps.
2) We have her on many supplements:
Ambrotose, Phyte Aloe, Acidophilus, Multi-vitamin, Vitamin C, an anti-fungal to kill fungal/yeast overgrowth in her gut (grapefruit seed extract), and the most important...DHA. We have her on 1100 mg of DHA a day. When she first started the DHA we noticed that if we said "smile for the picture" she actually smiled long enough to get the picture taken instead of getting distracted and running off right away or fighting us. And, while we are waiting for these things to work on her biology for long term improvement...
3) she is on Ritalin. We have her on a low dose and do it 2x a day. We tried the suspended release at the same dose but she was far more agitated on it, bedtimes included temper tantrums again, and we didn't see the calmness we saw on the immediate release. We could have upped the dose but decided to just go back to the twice daily dose and see how the summer goes.
4) I read a book from Focus on the Family called something like "ADHD doesn't have to mean Disaster." It was a very good book who helped me to see her outside of my box:)
5) we had her formally evaluated and diagnosed with ADHD...she scored out at the 95 - 99 percentile of behaviors (we knew that lol!!!)

One of the biggest lessons for me was: ADHD is REAL. I had secretly believed in the past that ADHD behaviors could be curbed with good, consistent, and thorough parenting. While I still believe that some ADHD behaviors can be fixed with that...not our child. That was very humbling...

The other big lesson for me: ADHD medication can curb impulsiveness, distractibility, and agitation...but it does not effect the strong willed personality that defines our child:) It is just that now the discipline to help her learn to submit to God's will and our will hopefully sinks in and is considered before it flies out her other ear lol!

Is life perfect now? No:) Do we still need to remind her to look at us and hear what we are saying? Yes:) Do we still need to talk extra loud to get her attention? Yes:) Do we still "tomato stake"? Absolutely yes!!!!! Do we trust her outside of our sight? A little bit more:) Does she still bully? Yes. Does she still insist on doing life her way? Of course:) But...considering what the past 3 years have looked like...this is bearable!!!

Finally, we also have been constantly reminded that God made her. He gifted her. He loves her. He has a plan for her. She is such a precious child. She has amazing gifts of art and motherliness ( in fact, it is usually her desire to "mother" the other children that results in her "making" them obey her lol!!!). We will wait on the Lord, trusting Him for each step...and being thankful that for now the medication is giving us an appreciated reprieve:)

Finalization!!!

We are finalized!