speaking too soon....

Well, in the last blog I gave a good report, but it was a little too soon. Within an hour of posting, we were cleaning up brown watery puddles of diarrhea on the floor where Isaac couldn't run to the bathroom fast enough.

Bathroom troubles with tots presents a certain challenge. When Isaac started having his problems last year he wasn't potty trained yet. By the end of the year something clicked and he knew what was going on. But folks, that's still just a couple months ago! So when something like this happened, as parents, we have to ask the question if it's a potty training issue or something else. But on the other hand, it's easy to tell it's not a potty training issue when it's his second poop of the day and it's loose diarrhea compared to a nice stool.

The first thing that happens, simultaneous with the clean up, is a frustration, "What could be the cause of this?!" Everything we are doing is careful and systematic, and we don't like to see something we can't explain. But then we replay the day, and realize he must have got a "treat" at church that afternoon. "Treats" like granola bars and goldfish, and well, almost anything bought in a store, contain soy lecethin or soybean oil, and if Isaac gets these things in his system, they're going to take a fast track of evacuation. The gals watching him that day were different from the regular Sunday crew, so we're putting it down to that.

As some of you may know dealing with allergies, we just have to be on top of this with Isaac's caregivers. I think it paints a good picture if we explain that if he gets anything unacceptable, in eight hours he will have uncontrollable diarrhea all over our house in a trail to the bathroom.

Other than that, we've started using the spreadsheet Matt posted for tracking diet and symptoms. And that was a couple days ago. Isaac has seemed to bounce back fine from that episode of diarrhea. We quizzed Orry about foods at church. Usually Orry (our four year old) is conscientious of what Isaac eats and "if it has soy in it", but we couldn't get a clear answer if they ate something or what they ate.

This morning is an early morning at the zoo, and we'll report more later.