Little Bits Birthday

My daughter is having a birthday today and I was thinking about her birth story. Of all the birth stories, hers is the least eventful. Since I was having a vbac again, we scheduled her birth. We picked the day and showed up and did the whole inducing thing. When she came out, I remember saying that she looked just like my mother. She still does. She came home in a day and the screaming began. She didn't have colic, she just screamed all the time. I was the only one she would have anything to do with. From the get go she only wanted me. This was hard with a three and just turned two year old, let alone the 2 older kids. Not even her big brother could handle her and he was a great babysitter. For the next four years all she did was scream. She wasn't spoiled, she was anxious. There was always a hint of fear in her eyes when she wasn't in my arms. She screamed so much that she scarred her vocal chords and sounded like an old man who smoke cigars for too long. She sorta out grew the screaming, but not the anxiety. She was so brave. For years she tried to overcome her fears. It broke my heart to watch her struggle.

One day when she was 6, I read a post from a friend who took her child off of wheat because of similar issues. And it worked. So I thought, what can it hurt? So I took her and one of her sisters off of all wheat products. That is not as easy as it sounds. It is amazing the places you find wheat products. I kept her off for three weeks and the change was amazing. Her hand tremors went away, the ones the doctor said not to worry about, it was just immature nervous system. The dark circles under her eyes went away. She always had them, it never occurred to me that they weren't supposed to be there. We had dealt with constipation problems since toddler hood. Haven't had them since.

It made no difference in her sister, but it changed my little bit's life. so much so that she won't knowingly have anything with wheat in it. We tried doing just a little, but she noticed the anxiety level right away. It makes her act little manic. It takes three days for just a bite of wheat to get out of her system. It makes life a little more complicated, but we have gotten pretty good at sniffing out the hidden wheat products like malt coloring which pretty much rules out all cereal. Her brother is off of wheat now too. He has different symptoms, but the difference is just as dramatic. He has a harder time saying no to wheat and actually gets sad about not having it, but not my daughter. For her it is just not worth it.