Extended belly and messy stinky poo

Those pictures were made couple of years ago. I found them when I was sorting contents of an old box. It brought wave of memories. Not good ones.

I made those pictures to show them to my doctor. She send me to prestigious gastrologist doctor from Mac-Master Hospital. We were waiting six moths for the appointment. I had high hopes. I was certain that that doctor will help us. He did not look at the pictures. His assistant did. He said that he had much worse cases everyday (I was wasting his precious time) It was a scene. I could not help myself and bursted into tears. I new that something was terribly wrong with my child. I new that his mucusy stools were not normal, his extended belly was not normal, undigested stinky messy poop for years - not normal. My heart would break every day when I was looking at it. I was reaching for help. I was send home. In tears.

My friend and neighbor, mother of three came to the rescue. - Are you giving him juice? Stop. - she said. I did and mucus mostly went away. But undigested food and stench stayed. It took two more long years for another mother to tell me about GAPS. I really did not want to try another diet, but something made me do it anyways. I would like to say that the rest is history. Well it is not quite so, and pretty, shapely, fragrant stools come and go, and come again. But good mood has been with us for weeks now, most tantrums went away, stiming goes up and down, but sometimes it goes down so much, that it disappears. A miracle.

So if your child:

is growing slowly,

he or she is just, skin and bones,

has extended belly,

has eczema,

has a lot of allergies,

cries a lot,

stims,

mouths almost everything, no - EVERYTHING!

is tense, and wired,

does not sleep well, sometimes it seems not to sleep at all,

wakes up in the middle of the night crying,

is cranky and fussy eater,

likes only very few foods,

has messy or very light in color stools,

do NOT believe anybody, doctor or no doctor, if they say that is is "normal", that your child just is like that, that it is his idiosyncrasy and he certainly will grow out of it.

Try GAPS. It just might help. Yahoo has a support group called GAPShelp. One needs a lot of help and reading in the beginning. One needs to unlearn a lot too. It is not going to be easy, but it is feasible even for easily distracted people like me. Your child will get better. But your pots and pans will get greasy. I promise.