The New Diet

Our hearts are OVERFLOWING with joy and thankfulness today! Today is our fourth official day on the lactose-free diet and we are seeing significant improvements in Kylie's abdominal distension!!!! The first couple of days that we were on it I kept thinking and wondering how long it would take before we would see any sort of improvement. I was trying really hard not to get my hopes up too much since we tried this diet two years ago with absolutely NO success. When we were on it a couple of years ago, I know that we tried it for at least a month and saw not even the slightest bit of improvement. Soon after that, Kylie got so incredibly ill. It had to have been that awful c-diff bacteria that kept us from seeing any improvement with her change in diet. And back then, we cut out both soy and lactose. Currently, we have just cut out the lactose. Anyway, we are SO excited about this progress and want to thank all of you for praying for us! Boy, has this ever been a journey! But I can't even imagine what it would be like without all the support that you have given us through the past few years.

I just took these pictures of Kylie this morning. I asked her if it would be okay to put a picture of her "new" tummy on the blog. I know, I should have taken a before picture of her tummy so that you could see the major progress. Well, you'll just have to trust me. A month ago, I was looking for "maternity" clothes for my 5 year old daughter. Her tummy was so incredibly large that it was peeking out of any normal shirt. Thankfully, the current styles for little girls are long shirts and leggings. It met our needs perfectly.

In the past four days, my kitchen has seen me a whole lot. I feel like I am living in my kitchen. Yesterday, I baked bread for her without milk. For dinner last night I attempted a stir-fry recipe. As I was making it, it was just not looking the most appetizing. In fact, it was looking really gross. As I was preparing it, I was thinking, "this is looking like a Dairy Queen night". Oh wait, nevermind, that trick won't work anymore!

I have about a week's worth of lactose-free meals planned before I need to begin hunting for some more recipes. I welcome any suggestions for lactose free cookbooks or tasty recipes. I so appreciate all of you who have been so encouraging to me in this diet change. It isn't easy, but it has been going so much better than I expected!