A big foody rant....

Sorry I have been MIA! Things ave been going rapidly down hill around here lately. First DH had gastro, and then a second bout of it (*shakes head* Told him not to have milk/coffee/juice on a raw stomach...) Then LM had tummy pains and a temp, then a temp and a cold and then she got into DH's snakes. Which was just fantabulous...

We have a very strict no additives/colourings/flavourings/preservatives diet with LM. Anything containing these things has us experiencing night terrors, mood swings and all sorts of nastiness. It has been a very long journey of hit and miss. I always thought the diet we had was a very balanced and healthy one. We always had a big emphasis on fresh fruit and veg, organic produce etc etc. But this journey has proven otherwise. It has seen us cut Philadelhia Cheese Spread (who would have thunk it....) kraft cheese slices, vegemite, stock cubes (yes, even those with "no added MSG" actually do contain MSG...)and basically all the mainstream breaky cereals as almost all of them contain dreaded Barley Malt Extract, which has been the last thing we have cut out. It also has MSG in it. It naturally occurs as the product is being produced. It was triggering really bad night terrors and sleep issue's in LM.

Since we cut it out of our diets around 9 months ago, we have not had one episode of night terrors. And just to make me REALLY extra happy, we no longer have any "going to bed" issue's either! The difference was just amazing. After struggling with sleep with LM for 3.5 years, we finally had a child who could recognise when she was tired. It was like the foods where drugging her and masking the "need sleep" receptors. It would take HOURS every night to get her to sleep. Every night was a struggle. Every single night. 45 minutes would be getting off lightly, generally it would take over 2 hours. Now she will actually tell us when she needs to go to bed. If she needs a nap, she will have one (after cutting day sleeps at 2 lol) and we NEVER have her crying and carrying on about going to sleep. The longest it takes her to fall asleep is half an hour. On a bad night. I had forgotten just how bad the night terrors where until last week, here on in to be known as "The Snake Incident"

So TH loves sweets. He has always LOVED snakes. He left an open packet on the table. I snuck a few during the day (which I shouldnt have been doing, having cut gluten) and then all of a sudden the pack was EMPTY! (as I take the last snake lol) I thought, holy crap, I am a total pig, I didn't realise I had eaten THAT many! Then at around 9pm, LM "woke" and was sobbing her little heart out, standing in the loo in her jammies. She had that vacant look, not really seeing me. Nothing I said was registering with her. Night terrors *sigh* So I bundled her up into my arms and tucked her into our bed and told DH he would have to sleep on the lounge. She "woke" every 10 minutes that night, crying and thrashing about.... It is so hard to see your child like that, and find yourself unable to help them. You just have to weather it. I was laying there, trying to catch a couple of winks of sleep before the next episode of excorsist child started, and I thought "Of course, the SNAKES!" That is why the pack went down so piggishly (so I had thought) Why I thought I could trust a 4 year old to abstain when I couldn't myself.... but she has always been so good about the diet restrictions we have in place. She gets her own special lollies every week, which she is free to eat as she wishes (Yummy Earth brand, for anyone looking for a good alternative!)

The following morning I had a little chat with her. I asked her if she ate some of Daddy's snakes *shakes head avoiding my eyes* I promised her I would not be mad with her if she had eaten them and asked her again *silent hang dog look* I asked her to give me a little cuddle if she had eaten the snakes, and she inched forward and gave me a cuddle *sigh* I have always maintained it is unfair to have things in the house LM cannot eat. And this is why. I have always at least hidden what she cannot have and indulged after she is asleep at the least.... I felt so bad. Yes, TH shouldn't have left them on the table, but I saw them and left them there. So it was as much my fault as TH's or LM's.

A timely reminder that what we are doing is right though, which is always welcome :) First night terror incident since "The Great Rice Bubble Debacle of 2009" where I was able to pin Mum to the fact LM must have eaten 2 bowls of rice bubbles at her house. When we discovered Barley Malt Extract was the root of LM's sleep issue's, I had not wanted to broach the topic with my Mum. She kept going on, saying I was going to give LM an eating disorder (insert monumental sigh...) so the last thing I wanted was issue's. LM went for a sleep over. Came back the next arvo. Night terrors. Mum SWORE up and down she had not given her anything out of the ordinary. Generally, LM had rice bubbles for breakfast at my Mum's place. One bowl was not enough to trigger a reaction, so that was one of the reasons I let it be. But after the night terror's we had, I knew something must be up. I asked Mum if LM had 2 bowls of rice bubbles instead of one. Yes, she had. So the topic had to be broached. Fortunately, the fact I was able to pinpoint, down to quantity, what it was that was eaten gave me some credance. No issue's from Mum (thank goodness!) all she asked was what she could get instead. And since then, we have had no night terrors and life has been so much easier!

Anyway, huge ramble :) But I am a huge believer in food being a major cause of childhood behavioural issue's. And the thing is, until you start cutting things out, you cannot see it for yourself. If someone had told me food was the root cause of all of our issue's with tiny toddler LM I would not have believed them. She was just going through a stage, yaknow? But having seen her behaviour slowly get better as we removed the foods, slowly, steadily, better and better, there is no way it could possibly be anything else. The regressions when the wrong foods are eaten are testimony to that.

Yes, it is damned hard in the begining. It is so hard to know where to start. But the rewards are so worth it! If you think it is too hard to do, I think and KNOW it is much harder work to deal with a child who is high on foods, day in day out. These days I have a child who is able to be reasoned with, who doesn't have massive meltdowns over the smallest things, who doesn't have huge emotionlly charged outburts (tears or anger) over nothing. Everyone always comments about how good she is about things. And let me tell you, it has not always been this way! And it wouldn't be this way if I had not cut out these so called "foods"

Never EVER trust that what is allowed to be sold as food is actually safe for consumption. The government and governing bodies are not to be trusted. We should all be able to go into the shops and buy, in good faith, what is on the shelves. We shouldn't have to do ridiculous amounts of research into numbers and additives etc etc. But unfortunately, that is the crappy world we live in.

A good starting place for anyone looking into restricting intake of additives/preservatives etc etc is on this site here...

http://www.fedupwithfoodadditives.info/

With a handy, wallet sized print out of numbers etc to look for/avoid....

http://www.fedupwithfoodadditives.info/information/additives.htm