Corn: The Prequel.

I have a burning suspicion right now.  And, as much as I like to be right most of the time... I'm really hoping I'm wrong on this.  There have been many unanswered questions with both of my girls and I believe the answer may come down to one word.  Corn.

This is Liv's FPIES blog, but I feel the need to expound here with L.  Bear with me, as I back up a few months.

Sometime following her third birthday, we re-trialed dairy with L and had it be a complete pass.  This, after having severe intolerance for the years prior.  I've talked briefly here about it; the couple of really exciting things we've been able to do now that she's enjoying a 'normal' diet.  Now, it was in the fall that her behavior really started getting extreme on occasion.  Assuming this was fallout from the entrance of a new sibling along with the recent homecoming of her Navy daddy, we just went with our new little discipline problem and dealt with it the best we could.  Fast forward to the past couple of weeks.  I've been putting in some serious computer time searching for the corn intolerance google needle in the haystacks of the internet abyss.  Seriously, if I thought there was little information available for FPIES there seems to be even less for corn allergy and intolerance.  Nonetheless, what has been written has been read.  While Liv's situation started making more and more sense... I started having a burning feeling in the pit of my stomach.

These stories talking about older kids' behaviors with corn intolerance or allergies sounds disturbingly similar to MANY things with L.  Oh dear.


Allow me to go down my list of goings on that seem to back up my suspicion.   First of all, it would make perfect sense that if this is corn allergy related, things went downhill in the fall.  You see, when she had to be dairy-free, there was very little pre-packaged food and convenience things that she could eat... these things are LOADED with corn ingredients and derivatives.  Being able to consume dairy opened up the possibility for the exhausted FPIES mommy to cut a few corners while I was nursing a a baby round the clock... it also pumped L full of corn.  When I say 'behavioral problems' I mean the kid goes off on tangents and is just completely irrational.  She will start screaming and/or crying for no apparent reason and can't tell you why she's so upset either.  Secondly, she has always been frantic when I've made her use hand sanitizer.  Goes ballistic and tells me it 'burns'.  Now, I just assumed there were cuts on her hands or something and she was being dramatic.  And maybe that's all it is, but it might not be.  Because hand sanitizer is alcohol... from corn.  For another thing, she has also been psycho at bath time getting soap anywhere near her face- says it burns.  It was tear-free baby shampoo.  It really shouldn't have been making her wail.  Again, thought it was just theatrics.  Buuuuuuut..... baby shampoo is made using, yes- corn.  In addition, the same reaction is seen with baby wipes near her face and she doesn't particularly like her hands wiped by them either.

From everything I've read, it appears that kids are just so stinking miserable being 'corned' if they are allergic or severely intolerant that it manifests in rather horrible behavioral ways.  They simply don't know how to verbalize that they feel like crap, and so they act out.  We have been very consistent with L,  but we are just at a loss when she is acting like this.  No discipline tactic seems to have any effect whatsoever.  Its like we aren't even talking to her.  She bounces off the walls and is very erratic. Very ADHD-like in symptoms, but there is an ebb and flow to it.  It isn't constant.

On the one hand, it really would be a bit of a parental relief if all of this could be traced back to corn.  To have the insanity end by changing her diet.  On the other hand, it is slightly heartbreaking to have to put her back on a restricted diet.  Having to tell her she can't have things she has come to really enjoy is not going to be fun.  Only one way to find out..  Here we go with corn-free trial with my #1 girl.


And what about my other favorite little person?  It is looking like my hunch with her was correct.  Since changing things like her sunblock, disposable diapers, wipes, and baby soap she has been quite a bit better.  She has worn the new sunblock on several occasions now and I've seen none of same symptoms as were experienced with the corn-laden version.  The more information I have seen, the more I'm questioning if some of her previous fails were really not the actual food at all, but the presence of corn ON the food from packaging or processing.

To be honest, its all making my head spin.  It makes SO much sense.  Too much, really.  I want so desperately to be wrong.  Avoiding corn is painful at best, and with so many other restrictions already the mere thought of my foreseeable future is exhausting.  So much to worry about... times TWO.

Corn.

I have childhood memories of looking out the car window at the blur of cornfields as far as the eye could see.  When people think of corn, they typically think of those cute little corn cob holders and summer BBQs.  I sure did.  Did being the operative word, here.  I no longer think of corn as a benign summer treat, and I'm really not all that happy to see the little cob holders, either.  I'm tired of seeing corn... because it is EVERYWHERE.  In EVERYTHING.  Why do I care if its everywhere and in everything?  Because I'm beginning to wonder if its a bigger part of Liv's puzzle than originally thought.  Yeah, because she needs more complications to her diet and everyday living...  ugh.

Its been a while since I've updated a post here.  In a certain sense, I think I just needed to take some time for a breather.  Liv's been doing well on her formula, and we've had enough foods to keep her feeding skills up.  Essentially, I needed to not have every waking moment's thought revolve around FPIES.  We've gone to the beach and hit up the local water park.  Just enjoyed some beginning summer fun.  Unfortunately, though, I'm thinking these things have reinforced my prior concerns about corn.  Worse- it appears her problems with corn are more 'involved'.

We had been going to the beach, but she was eating the sand a bit while we were there.  I assumed that the sand was the reason for subsequent loose stool and diaper rash.  Ok, so we start hitting up the water park.  Same thing, except she wasn't eating sand.  Wasn't even really ingesting any chlorinated water.  She WAS however slathered in sunblock(... with plenty of corn ingredients and soy oil).

You can see where this is starting to go, right?

We went blueberry picking -a favorite activity for L- and thought that this was a perfect opportunity to trial blueberries.  You can't really get a more unspoiled source than picking organic berries from the bush yourself, so why not!  The first day we went, I had her in an Ergo on my back and only needed to put a tiny bit of sunblock on her.  The first day or two of blueberries resulted in slightly loose stool and maybe a hint of mucous, but nothing else.  Seemed blueberries were being well received?  We went again a few days later to pick more berries.  I let her down to run around and even pick some herself.  Knowing she'd be running around, I slathered the poor kid in sunblock.  Well, the floodgates of mucous poo opened, and it wasn't good.  Bloody bottom, reflux and everything.  Misery.  Her blanket even smelled of reflux the next morning.  She must have had some gnarly reflux in the middle of the night.

My mind is still not functioning, apparently, to start connecting dots...


I assume its the blueberries.  It was a bit of a mental blow, actually.  Even for FPIES kids, the likelihood of reactions to blueberries is really low.  Almost no kids have problems with blueberries.  What was going on???

THEN.  Livvy got ahold of some of her sister's stickers.  And ate them.  I know that she ate them because they came roaring out the other end fully intact a few hours later like something off of Nickelodeon's Slime Time.

CRAP!  Well, literally, but also Oh my Goodness, how did I not see this???


Most kid's things like books, stickers and the like are printed with soy ink.  You know- all those lovely things that tell parents that even if their kid ingests it, it won't be toxic?  Yeah, well that's how- they use soy.  AND, most adhesive is made from....you guessed it!  CORN!

The take-away from the last few weeks?  Corn is way more of a problem than I thought it was, and even more of a problem than I thought it could be.  GI symptoms from topical applications of corn products and by-products?  I've heard of the phenomenon from other FPIES mamas, but I'll admit its odd.  There is not much known about FPIES, scientifically speaking, and so much that the doctors don't understand about the mechanism of it.  If it was 'just' protein intolerance, GI symptoms shouldn't be manifesting themselves from topical application of products.  Patch testing -which is a bit controversial in the FPIES community- shouldn't get any results either for that matter.  But some have had very accurate results from it.  Its obvious, to me at least, that this is truly an allergy of some sort... we just don't understand the 'sort'.

My plan of action is to painstakingly remove ALL corn products from Liv's life and see how she does.  It makes me wonder if some of our other 'fails' were fails because there was already something her body was fighting in a way- all the additional corn products.  Tylenol, wipes, the occasional disposable diaper (we use cloth most of the time), baby soap, sunblock.......

Other thoughts?  I am hoping and praying regularly that we don't somehow develop issues with her formula because of corn intolerance.  THAT is a whole other frightening topic I'm not even sure I want to think about more than a few sentences worth.

I suppose its a good thing that I 'took a few weeks off' of my FPIES mommy brain working in overdrive.  I'll need the energy to deal with ridding corn from Liv's life.
 Yup.  I just don't look at corn at the farmer's market the same way anymore.  A kind old farmer said while I was there last, 'Oh, you must be looking for some of this [corn] too, right?'
'No, thank you, sir.  We have too much corn at home already'.