Our GAPS Journey: How I Gave Myself An Ulcer From Cooking Too Much

A few weeks before our ceiling fell down, I had decided that our family could benefit from the GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome) diet. If you're not familiar you can check it out at the official GAPS website.

Our oldest was recently diagnosed with autism and we were doing everything we could to help him. I had read countless accounts online of families with young children who sounded just like him, whose autism had been "cured" by the GAPS diet. The accounts I read online were all blogposts called "Our GAPS Journey" or something touchy feely of the sort. As a sort of Type A person enjoys having control over every aspect of my life, I found satisfaction in the idea that a diet could help with Caleb's behaviors. We were doing speech and social therapy, but food? I had never even considered that what we feed our children can have such an effect on their development. (I began to check out library books on this topic like a madwoman and I'm still considering going back to school for nutrition!).

The GAPS diet is no joke; it is built on the idea of cleansing the gut with probiotics and animal fats and involves a detox (which is the only part we didn't do, since I couldn't imagine myself suceeding at getting my five year old to eat meat broth for three days in a row).  I've always been a bit of an all-or-nothing girl, and the GAPS was certainly ALL. (After explaining the diet to my poor husband, he politely asked why we can't half-ass the diet, instead of doing a full blown crazy person version, to which I explained how the prohibitied food we were eating would continue to inflame our gut, and it wouldn't have time to truly heal, which would render all our other efforts pointless.) I can really geek out with this stuff guys...

I had done several elimination diets before for myself, and while I had liked to think our family's eating habits were "healthy," after reading and actually paying attention to what I fed the kids in particular (um peanut butter and goldfish crackers every day please?) I realized we were pretty crappy at the healthy eating thing and had fallen into the habit of doing what is easiest because, life. While I used to enjoy cooking, back when I just had one or two kids and was able to share responsibility with James, I actually sort of hated it now. This was truly the last thing I wanted to care about, but the idea that it could affect my son's social and academic performance when he started kindergarten in a few months stuck with me; if this was something that could possibly work, even if it required more time in the kitchen and a change in our habits, we were going to give it a shot.

But here's the thing, GAPS, if you do it right (and of course I had to do it right!) involves cooking EVERYTHING from scratch, making soup from grassfed meats every day, making free range eggs every day, drinking raw milk (good luck finding that), culturing your own raw milk products, fermenting your own organic vegetables, and not drinking coffee, alcohol, or consuming any sugar or deritive of sugar except for a very small amount of honey. It was a lot of work. :(

Since we were ordering pizza once a week and snacking on processed carbs when I read the GAPS book, Our GAPS Journey started pretty slowly; first we eliminated everything processed, then we eliminated gluten, and then we eliminated all grains. And for the most part, the kids did great. I just told them that the prohibited foods would make their belly sick, and they believed me. We even went to a Phillies game with my entire family for my dad's birthday. My grandmother got ice cream, and my kids flocked to her for a share. I got them back over to our seats by bribing them with an organic carrot. A few minutes later, Caleb had a tantrum because he had dropped his carrot on the stadium floor and it was now rolling down several rows in front of us. He was melting down, but experience told me that it was about to get a lot worse, so there I was, holding the 11-month old and crawling past all these Phillies fans to get to the aisle so I could get a better look at where this carrot went. If you have a kid like Caleb, you know that sometimes calming him down just doesn't happen unless he gets the thing he wants. Luckily, the strangers ten rows in front of us somehow got a wind of what was going on, and without stopping to ask us why our kid was screaming for a carrot, when the lady next to him was eating ice cream, they handed it back to us. Whew! Crisis adverted.

Our GAPS Journey was fun while it lasted, and a few people in our life even told me that they did notice a difference in Caleb's behavior, eye contact and social skills while were were on the diet. But our journey ended abrupty when I began to have severe stomach pain and vomiting whenever I ate any kind of animal fat (which was every few hours on the GAPS diet). I'm talking so severe that it was on par with the pain I had during my three natural labors, and there were a few times I even had to sit in the hot bath and use those hynobirthing techniques. Yuck. In the weeks that followed, I had plenty of mornings where the kids had to stay in the pajamas until lunchtime because I couldn't move, nevermind take them to the park. This was terrible because I am not a huge fan of going to the doctor, not even for having babies. But this. I wasn't going to try to get rid of this myself. It was too big for me.

When a series of test results led me to a GI doctor, she told me she was certain that I had a stomach ulcer. An ulcer? Wasn't that something that people get when they are old and super stressed out?
(It isn't by the way, you can get an ulcer from an infection that's pretty common!) 

Then it hit me. God was trying to tell me something here. Since embarking on this "GAPS Journey", I have spent way too much of my free time in the kitchen. And I secretly hated it. The books I was reading about nutrition and child development made me obsess about ever ounce of food I was putting into my kids stomachs. If we didn't do this diet, I would feel guilty, and if I did do it, I would continue to feel guilty for hating it so much. I was determined to provide them with the best possible nutrition as they grew up, yet I was forgetting that nutrition was only one element of their development. Instead of reading to them and playing with them, and, perhaps more importantly, taking care of myself (my workouts, which were my main source of stress relief, had taken a pathetic turn due to my broken hand and my low energy from eating so low carb), I was consumed with meal planning, cooking, fermenting, culturing, and baking. I was driving to PA line to buy raw milk from a farmer in a parking lot. When I could not meal plan in time to get delivery from The Family Cow (See below!), I was planning our week around which farmers' markets we could get to! All the people  in the Facebook GAPS support groups said it would get easier, but for me, with three little ones five and under, a baby that wouldn't sleeep unless touching my nipple, a 100 pound puppy, a husband with a three hour commute, a house that was literally falling apart, and a broken right hand that made cutting veggies impossible, it was time to admit, that this journey flat out sucked, and it was past time for it to end.

I started to let the kids have grains and then breads. And before you knew it, we were ordering pizza again (once in a while!) and having ice cream cake for my birthday. (My three year old, pointing at my ice cream cake, informed me that this is the kind of birthday cake she wanted to have at her party next year. Apparently, she was disappointed with the GAPS-friendly cupcakes we had made for her and her friends a few weeks before. They were sweetened with honey and so our kids were the only ones that ate them. I feel slightly guilty...maybe we should have a birthday party redo?)

I stopped reading the nutrition books for a few weeks. I played with my kids more. I remembered that there are other theories out there for helping children with autism, like Sonrise Technique and Floortime, where you get down on their level and play with them for several minutes a day; maybe these were the right strategies for our family right now?

My running workouts were noticably better.
My stomach pains stopped.
My sleep improved.
The kids' sleep improved.
We were happier.

(There's so many people who say the opposite; that their sleep improved while they were on GAPS.)

That's the thing I find so fascinating about nutrition; it's never one-size-fits all, just like so many other things in life, and there's always lifestyle factors to consider. You just have to do what nourishes you, your body and soul.

For me, for my family, at this time, GAPS was more stressful than it was nourishing. Maybe our guts aren't going to be that healthy. Maybe they'll be downright unhealthy. But maybe, that is just not the worst thing in the world for our family at this moment. 

Since we did notice a difference in our son, we are probably going to hire a nutritionist to develop his own personal plan once school begins, which hopefully won't be as intense as GAPS, and will be tailored to his individual needs, but for now, we are indulging where it's earned, and trying to relax and enjoy life. 


Where to find GAPS food:

When we embarked on this "journy," I quickly realized that my shopping and my budget needed tweaking; many of these items were not sold at the Wal-Mart grocery pickup, my primary grocery-getting strategy that involved ordering things from my phone, scheduling a time to pick them up, putting the kids in the car and driving to the WalMart, popping my trunk and waiting for the employee to put the groceries in my trunk for me. This involved no wrestling of children, and no people at the grocery store judging my lack of parenting skills. . I didn't think I would ever be able to find something this good in the world of raw, organic, and fermented food...

Then I found these farmers in Pennsylvania who raise animals humanely. You order online and they ship it to a cooler right outside of your front door! Their website and email list is a treasure chest for anyone experimenting with a traditional diet such as GAPS. And their philosophy of raising animals the way Our Creator meant for them to be raised really reasonated with me. It made sense to me that God wanted these cows to eat grass because it made the cows healthier and their milk and beef made us healthier. Other than fasting and making simple meals during Lent, I had never given too much thought about my food consumption choices from this spiritual perspective. Check out to see if the Family Cow delivers to your doorstep. You will not be disappointed!*

*Do understand that there are some risks in consumming raw milk. It is not for everyone! 

Summer Memoirs Part I

In the middle of May, my husband James was invited to a bachelor party in the woods in Western Maryland. The event was several days long and happened to be about twenty minutes from his parents' lake house at Deep Creek Lake. We knew we couldn't justify spending two or three nights at the bachelor party when those were prime family time days and the kids and I hadn't spent more than a few waking hours with him during that week (did I mention that his round trip commute is 3 hours on average?), and probably wouldn't the next, since he was going to South Dakota for work, so we decided I would take the kids to the lake house while James spent the day with his man friends, probably coming home once everyone was asleep. James' parents and brother and his girlfriend came and helped me with the babies, which was such a blessing. As you can expect from a weekend at the lake house with loved ones, it was amazing.

We came home on Sunday night with some daylight hours to spare, and hung out in our backyard before we even brought our suitcases into the house or unpacked. (This proves that I was seriously relaxed because I am frantic about unpacking the minute we arrive anywhere. Perhaps this wouldn't be a problem if I was a more organized packer, but I just know that if we wait, someone will pee themselves or worse and I will be throwing everything out of our trunk looking for extra socks and/or underwear for everyone or I will get peanut butter in my eye while making a sandwich like I did the other day and I'll need a new contact ASAP and not be able to find it). James and I put the dog and kids in the backyard, watching them get all their energy out from the 3.5 hours in the car, and started talking about what our trip to the Western Maryland wilderness had inspired: it would be nice to have more property, and maybe we could even fulfill my dream of having a chicken coop and his of having a stream (but not one that would ever flood too much or get too deep for the kids :). It was starting to get dark and we finally decided it was time to start unloading and doing bedtime. I brought a suitcase upstairs to the kids room and all our talk about moving in the distant future came to be not so distant. I found this:

Without stepping into the room, I went directly back downstairs, saying a Hail Mary the entire way down, asking God to help me figure out the best way to tell my husband that structure of our home has been compromised, that the ceiling in the childrens' bedroom had collapsed.

We had bought this house two years ago. It was our first house. We didn't expect perfection. We had replaced the furnace, hot water heater and fire place. We had tried to fix a bunch of other random things. I had painted about half the rooms. But this?

That piece of drywall in the picture is on top of the kids' bed (which was a mattress on the floor, which was my grandparents and my parents mattress and is several decades old, so no real loss there). But what if we hadn't decided to go to the lake? All of this would have fallen on top of the kids. Would I have been able to hear them? I could not begin to think about it; there was some serious guardian angel action going on here and we were to be very thankful. But...why had the ceiling fallen down!?

James remained in the backyard for what seemed like as long time before going inside to check it out, while I called our parents and homeowners insurance (I guess we are still at that age where you call your parents for help when things like this happen.)

We had approximately 36 hours before James' flight would leave for South Dakota. I had planned to go up to my parents house for a few days while he was gone. Since I had no idea where to begin with cleaning up a ceiling that had collapsed, I went into super mama bear mode and decided that we needed to leave the premises as soon as possible before the rest of the home fell down on us or the insulation, which had escaped from the attic and could be absetos, began to cut our lungs. The entire family slept in the basement that night. I left for my parents' in the morning and James spent the entire next day and night cleaning up the mess with the help of his dad and a friend...thank goodness for them! They took over 300 lbs of ceiling garbage to the dump!

Meanwhile, the kids and I went to relax at my parents pool :) My parents and siblings and grandparents were all around even though we had decided to come early, and in the middle of the week, and the kids were entertained and exhausted at the end of every day. I was beginning to think that I got the good part of the deal here with James handling most of the cleanup; aside from calling a few contractors and insurance, I had done very little to remedy the situation.

On our last day there, I was alone with the kids for the first time all week. My parents' yellow lab had escaped and I was trying to herd him and the three kids into the house for lunch. Instead of listening, he ran  into my right thumb and broke it at tendon that controls my wrist and fingers.

That incident made it only slightly easier to force myself to leave my parents' home, which not only has in tact ceilings, but a pool, yard, space, and most importantly, a bunch of other adults who could help with the kids. On the drive back, I was feeling pretty overwhelmed and stressed about how to handle the collapsed ceiling thing, even though the cleanup was mostly done. We had scheduled a bunch of estimates for insurance. But what if they didn't cover it? Even if they did, it was going to be a big expense. This was the kind of thing we just hadn't saved money for. What about the ceilings in the other rooms? What about all the kids' stuff that had insulation all over it?

I was pulling onto the interstate, about five minutes from my parents, when Caleb informed me that he had to pee. I had tried to force him to go right before he left, but seeing that he is the most stubborn kid ever (wonder where he gets that...) and so here we were, on the ramp to the highway. I had a 100 pound puppy and the three kids in the car by myself. There was no way I could run to a rest stop and leave them somewhere off the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania interstate, and there was no way he could go in some rest stop off the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania interstate by himself as he still isn't following two-step directions. This wasn't an unfamiliar problem; when we were potty training (the last two summers), I would drive everywhere with a little potty in my passenger seat, sometimes, yes, just dumping it out the window. On the drive up, Eleanor had to pee and I prompty handed her one of the diapers meant for my 11-month old. She was able to pee in it without making any mess at all. Since there was nowhere to pull over, I thought I would try the same for Caleb. After about a minute of him trying o figure out how this would work, I felt myself get sprayed by...you guess it, a generous sprinkle of urine decorated my already dirty shirt and the drivers' seat. I now had a home that was falling down, a broken hand, and had been recently peed on by my 5 year old.

4 Reasons to (Re)start a Mommy Blog Right Now

It's been awhile...3.5 years! I've always loved writing, but blogs can be work yo. So here are a few reasons why I am back to blog and maybe you should too, if you've got an itch to write down things:

1.  I have the worst memory. My kids are saying some really hilarious things and I need to write them down somewhere so I can share them with them when they are old and embarrass them in front of their significant others. Also, I have a bunch of family that lives far away who would love to be around more. This is the next best thing.

2. Being home all day with the three kids under five means I can go several hours without speaking to another adult. Typically, I have been okay with this, because I'm that introverted. BUT...When you realize the most conversation you've had all day is whether or not Minions and giants live on the moon, and you haven't been able to get out of the house for a week because your kids broke out in some weird rash...it is just not healthy anymore guys. In times like these, it is okay to turn to the internet to make friends.

After I got pregnant with our first baby (which was a surprise baby by the way, I'm talking super-dooper surprise baby), I had this re-conversion experience that brought me back to my childhood faith of Catholicism. I kind of took the long way. (There are so many of us out there who did!) As it turns out, the activities I was most consummed with during this time in my life were not recommended during pregnancy by the American Academy of Pediatrics, and most of the people I was spending time with were  just. not. able to relate. when I stopped our common activities to ask big questions like, "maybe there is a reason this baby is here, oh man, what should I do? How should this child be raised?" While my older friends are still all very awesome individuals, at that time, I needed some mom friends to help me look through life through this new and unexpected perspective of motherhood. I grew strong in my relationship with my own mother at this time, and for the first time, started to have a devotion to the Blessed Mother. I didn't know it at the time, but I started this blog (and started reading others) as a way to open up that window to finding mom fellowship at a time when I really, really needed it (and was too socially awkward and caught of guard by my new role to pursue it in my real life.)  In a world where our sense of community is shrinking, who says we can't make the best of the internet, despite all the problems it's created, and have some Catholic mom fellowship over blogs and Instagram while the kids watch Netflix in their pajamas? I know it's not a novel idea; you guys have been around for awhile but I'm ready to take the plunge and get bloggin' once more.

One thing I've grown to appreciate in the four years and two babies since I've blogged here, is that when you're blogging, your stories cannot be interrupted as they are in real life or on the phone, by little people who are pulling each others shirts and screaming (or, pulling on my shirt and screaming, like my weaning thirteen month old while I type).

PS - I myself super blessed to have an amazing mother's fellowship group at our home parish. People whom I never met cooked meals for me after our third baby was born and we had just moved here and knew no one - that kind of amazing! As someone who is always the awkward wallflower at groups like this, I was surprised that this is a thing I didn't just need, but enjoyed.  (Back when we were looking to move out of NE Baltimore City and I really felt myself needing Catholic mom friends, I said the Mary of Knots novena, asking God to help me be receptive to people in my life who can be faith-sharing friends!) Since Natural Family Planning is the teaching of the Catholic Church, and if you're a Catholic woman who is also new to NFP, or is also super fertile and similarly terrible at it like I am, you're pretty much guarenteed to find yourself also going crazy from having back to back to back children, these kind of groups should be a thing everywhere, at every parish in every country. But sometimes there are no groups at any parish. That's where the internet (and books!) can help. And because this is messy and this is difficult and instead of competing and comparing, we need to lift one another up, even if it just means listen to one another complain on our mommy blogs ;) while the kids watch Netflix in their pajamas (this is a theme here).

3. Doing something on computer will make me feel sleek, professional, and generally important/
I have been completely not working for a year. Before that, I was working part-time for an environmental non-profit's internet presence, and even teaching high schoolers rhetoric at a classical homeschool academy where my oldest attended preschool. I had a reason to check my email a few times a week. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time "off" from not the workplace, but right now, I have my cup of coffee, my Pandora going at my dining room table, and I have no one to listen to but the sound of my own voice, typing. It feels like work, but it isn't because....

4. Writing is my passion.
What feels like a long time ago, before I had a chaotic cloud of small children following me around everywhere, I would be somewhere, with other people my age, and someone would ask me what my passion was, and I would always respond, unequivocally, "writing." That was back when people used to have conversations about what their passions were.  (Did other people spend approximately all of their young adulthood deliberating this topic? I mean, I did attend a liberal arts college where we spent freshman year doing trust falls and searching for activities that put us in "flo" and joined the AmeriCorps volunteer corps afterwards where we talked how to change the world and helped to craft personal mission statements....) All of that disappeared, and with three kids in five years, three moves, and just adulting in general, I think I'm not the only one who has put something I'm passionate about up on the shelf, to get to it later, when the bills are all paid, dishes done, laundry, folded, and my kids are sleeping through the night and in school. It took a great book (it's always books for me) to knock me over the head and say, just do what you love. One Beautiful Dream by Jennifer Fulwiler, Catholic mom blog mastermind. She is also the original founder of 7 quick takes, which I used to do on this blog. (I tried to make this into 7 short reasons why I'm blogging, but instead I'm making it four long reasons because I guess I don't have that many reasons, just a few good reasons....) I'm sures she's inspired a hundred or more mom blogs, giving so many people courage to follow their passion and use their voices. Buy her book now.

So here I am, back in "flo", writing because it is one of the things I LOVE, and I've learned to simplify my life and only do the things I love with the few hours of free time I make for myself each day. These are the things that give me the energy to get through the rest of the day. These things do not include "crafting, cooking, or working", which I believe are in the subtitle of this blog since I made it four years ago? Whaaa? I'm not sure who I was trying to impress, but these activities are not energy-giving to me. Every craft I've ever done looks like a preschooler did it, and the only reason I typically take anything on is because I pridefully say "I can make that myself for less money." I've always been a bit of a cheap-o :) but whenever I'm done, I wish I just paid for the thing at homegoods or Target instead of trying to recreate it with all the random art supplies in our basement. Unless I'm painting (I still LOVE painting) or refinishing a piece of furniture, I am usually not enjoying myself while crafting, but just getting more and more frustrated that I cannot make it look like whatever I saw on Pinterest. Cooking is something I do because I believe it is necessary to provide a nutrient-rich diet to young kids, however, I put it on my CHORE list not on my THINGS TO DO DURING NAPTIME or TV TIME list. Working in the traditional sense was also never something I enjoyed (said almost every person ever) but don't get me wrong, I'm still working. Don't believe me? Subscribe today.

So, since I don't really want this blog to be about things that make me want to pull my hair out when I try to do them, I guess it's time for some... rebranding?