In 2010 we got a diagnosis of ulcerative colitis for our son Isaac who was then 27 months old. For a year and a half we had been concerned about his persistent soft stools. Now that we're going down the road of living with IBD in our house, we want to be able to share our story, connect with similar families or individuals, and increase our awareness of the experience of others.

Some of our related interests are diet, kids and families with IBD, and discussing and sharing experiences.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

update series: the liberation

At our doctor's appointment just before thanksgiving we got explicit instructions to liberate Isaac's diet, which meant give him some animal proteins. He weighed a pound less than his previous appointment and his iron levels were low, so let's beef him up, I think they thought.

I was still pretty insistent on getting back to the vegan diet and using vegan tools to increase weight and iron. But around this time it got pretty heated again, between Bonnie and me. One of the factors that kept coming up were my control issues. Now, I will admit I have some control issues. I always like to analyze my self and make improvements when necessary, and I think I've handled my control issues fairly well since I was 17. This particular situation didn't seem to me to be about my control issues AT ALL, but after hearing it a few times, I said something like, "You (directed at any audience which thinks so) think I want to be in charge of all this? I would happily accept the care/instructions of somebody else who will do better. But I am completely convinced that there are other, more reasonable and scientific treatments to try before steroids or at least before assuming we can't make progress with diet."

So in my controlling way, I relinquished control entirely and told Bonnie that she was in charge of what Isaac was eating and taking and so on. And at most I would only frown upon what I saw, and put in my two cents.

He was actually having softer bowel movements ever since that first couple weeks of nice solid poops. but these bowel movements were completely formed and still definitely within normal and healthy, it would seem. He continued in this way for another week or so after we "liberated his diet".

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