O-Boy(s)!: Wonderfully Made

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Wonderfully Made

"For (you) are Fearfully and Wonderfully made..." Psalms 139

I think that everyone in our home LOVES newborn babies. We have something of a baby fever here. Good thing that Tianna is having one any day now! There is much excitement here at our house waiting for our new cousin. Jacob had this idea to make the baby a pillow for his bed to welcome him. I must admit that I thought of Michael as my "project boy" and Jacob as my "toy boy" - when will I learn to stop attaching labels to anyone, let alone my own children? Silly me. Jacob has fully embraced a love of all projects, and dreams up very creative gifts for people these days. ...I started something at Christmas I suppose!

So of course we got to work on the new baby's pillow. He drew the picture with fabric markers on a piece of muslin. He also chose the back. Then he sat on my lap and fed the fabric thru the machine. Last he helped stuff the pillow.

The pillow says, "I love the newborn baby" and he wanted to add "even though I don't know him yet". I had to convince him that it would be a bit crowded on the pillow with all those words, and he could just tell them that bit. That is how we all feel about him though!

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What is FPIES?

I have 2 children that are recently healed from FPIES - Food Protein Induced Enterocolitis Syndrome. Scotty is 5 years old - and fought this disorder for about 3.5 hard years. Colin is a 20 month old baby - and had a quick recovery. He is recently cleared of all of his symptoms, calling him FPIES free!

FPIES is a severe delayed food allergy of the gut, it is understood to be a T-cell mediated response in which food is considered a foreign invader and the body “fights” it until it can violently expel it; although the exact mechanisms are still not well understood.

Symptoms include: profound vomiting (often to bile), diarrhea and/or constipation. These can lead to: lethargy, low body temp or fever, hypotension, and in severe cases, sepsis and shock. Reactions to food are often delayed - a couple hours or even days.

Many children also experience a combination of discomforting symptoms while the body "fights" this reaction and these can include: extreme stomach pains, gas, runny stools with or without mucous or blood, persistent hiccups, acid reflux, rashes, sleep disturbance, and agitation. Other atypical symptoms I see in my own children are persistent runny noses and ear infections. Sypmtoms can last a couple hours or even weeks after the initial ingestion of a trigger food.

FPIES is a clinical diagnosis (based on symptoms), there is currently no test for it.

FPIES common trigger foods as listed in the literature include, but are certainly not limited to: Dairy, Soy, Rice, Oats, Barley, Green Beans, Sweet Potatoes, Squash, Chicken, Turkey, Corn, Eggs.

Safe foods for these children to eat are determined by food challenges either at home or the doctor's office, as directed by the child's physician.

Children diagnosed with FPIES are treated in part with a strict elimination diet - keeping all trigger foods 100% out of their bodies. It is hoped that this will give their gut time to "heal".

Read and learn more in Joy's collection of articles:
FPIES File Cabinet

Also see her great collection of articles at The FPIES Foundation:
Medical Resource Articles

Check out this new great website with tons of FPIES info:
International Association for Food Protein Enterocolitis