*SIGH* relief. Well, for now anyway.

We have a few positive things to report from the last few weeks.  I'm feeling a bit less terrified than a few weeks ago after our miserable ending to the banana trial.  Soon afterward she also came down with a cold.  She's never had a cold or been otherwise sick at all... apparently many kiddos with FPIES are rarely sick.  Interesting.  Anyway, because of the cold and crankiness and possible poo looking funny because of it, I delayed starting our carrot food trial.  Being able to notice some signs of a food fail before it gets 'bad' is important.  The worse the reaction, the longer it will be before she is recovered enough to try something else.  As it was, it took nearly two weeks for Liv's demeanor and sleep to return to normal following about three days of being miserable and hardly leaving my lap.  

I'm happy to report that so far so good with carrots after about a week.  We are still going to continue for a few more days before I am comfortable, but there's absolutely no signs of any issues so far.  None.  Even bigger news, though, is that she's happily feeding herself small pieces and seems to like it.  Pears and bananas I had to literally shove down her throat with the spoon because she wanted NO part of it.  There was serious fear on my part that we were going to end up doing therapy to overcome this food aversion business.  So I am THRILLED that she's feeding herself.  Our dog is pretty psyched too.  With all the food bits flying off the high chair tray, I think he's finally starting to forgive me for bringing another tail puller home.  Ha!

We also had another visit with our allergist.  I just love her.  She's personable, informed, and (this part is important) admits that she doesn't know EVERYTHING, and has told us that if Livvy's case gets complicated she'll refer us up to CHOP.  *** stepping on soap box ***  I completely respect the amount of time and effort that goes into the higher education of physicians and other medical professionals.   But some of them believe that they surely know everything and that they understand what is going on with your kid better than you do.   I've had more than one give me pretty crummy advice that prolonged misery of my child, and they'll have to forgive my hesitance to accept their words as gospel.  *** exiting soap box now ***  Ahem.  Anyway.  So we saw the allergist and our next food to try is white potato.  I'm pretty excited about this for a few reasons.  For one, it seems like statistically it should be an easier 'pass'.  For the other, I can do fun things like make oven fries!  Yummy finger food!  I don't know if I can adequately explain my excitement over the possibility of tasty finger food, but believe me, I'm stoked.  A little piece of something 'normal' to give to my baby girl is very exciting... there's so many 'normal' things she doesn't get right now.  

So I'm praying, hoping, and keeping fingers & toes crossed that carrots continues to go well and that white potato is Ok :)  For this moment in time, we're on a small up-swing on this FPIES roller coaster.