My experiments...

I decided to give Shawn a little bit of cheddar cheese two days ago to see if I still saw a behavior reaction. Don thinks I'm imagining it so I told Shawn that it was a test. If he wanted to continue to be able to eat cheese, he had to be on his best behavior or else I will think it is the cheese making him act that way and he won't be able to have cheese anymore. He only got half a slice. He did pretty good at first although he did seem to get a little more hyper but not enough for me to think he was having a reaction. However, about 2 hrs after eating the cheese, he got really whiny and argumentative. It's the same reaction I've seen before when he eats cheese so I'm not imagining it! I even tried to remind him several times to watch how he was acting because he won't be able to eat cheese anymore but he just couldn't control himself so for now he won't be eating cheese :(

Today was another experiment. I decided to give the homemade goat yogurt another try. This time I was going to start out with a very small amount. I gave him 1/8 teaspoon. I did see a reaction but it wasn't too bad so I may try him again at 1/8 teaspoon tomorrow and see how he does. His reaction to the yogurt today only lasted about 2 hrs and then he was back to normal. I just don't know if he's reacting to the goat milk casein or if it's the probiotics in the yogurt. I'm going to try and drip some tonight and give him 1/8 tsp. of the dripped yogurt tomorrow and see how he reacts. After that, I'll try to freeze some and give him some of that. Freezing kills most of the probiotic so if he still reacts, I'll know its the goat milk. If he doesn't react to the frozen yogurt, I'll know it's the probiotics he's reacting to.

Extreme die-off!!!

After 2 days of SCD Yogurt and 1 day of SCD cheesecake, Shawn is going through some serious die-off. Wednesday and Thursday he came home from school with yellow in his agenda. Wednesday for not paying attention and getting his work done and Thursday for jumping on another student at pack up time. Today when he got off the bus, I noticed he was wearing different clothes than he had on this morning. When I asked him why, he told me that him and one of the other boys in his class got wet in the sprinkler on the way to speech. He told me he got on red but when I checked his agenda, it was green. Usually, if he gets yellow or red his teacher will put an X through the green dot and then give a yellow or red with a small explanation. I'm not sure if she forgot to mark his agenda or Shawn was mistaken but I think she probably forgot. His behavior was awful this afternoon. My voice was getting hoarse from yelling so much. He was very defiant, very whiny, argumentative, easily frustrated, and just plain mean. I had Don put him in the bath with some Epsom Salt and I made him soak for about 30 minutes. He was much better after the bath. I didn't give him anymore yogurt or cheesecake today. I'll see how his behavior is tomorrow and decide whether or not I want to give him any. If I do, I'll only give him a very small amount.

So it's been a few days since I posted so I wanted to update. We tossed the first batch of yogurt and started over. This time it turned out perfect. It is verrrry tart! It is definitely something you use in recipes instead of eating alone. I made a smoothie using strawberries, orange juice, some yogurt, honey, and some ice and it was pretty tasty. I added a banana the second time and it was even better. I talked Shawn into drinking some (about 2 oz). I told him he could either drink the smoothie or eat the rest of his meat and he chose the smoothie. Yesterday morning as he was eating breakfast, he complained that his stomach hurt and then said he needed to poop. He did not have diarrhea but wow, the amount of poop that came out of him was impressive. But then he had to poop again about 15 minutes later and had pretty much the same amount! I guess it was the probiotics at work. Yesterday he came home with yellow and a note from his teacher saying that he had difficulty paying attention and getting his work done. Hmmm, I'm not sure what he reacted to. It could be the probiotics in the yogurt causing die-off or it could be the goat milk. Goat milk is supposed to be more tolerable than cow's milk but it still contains casein. So I decided to use a trick suggested by someone on one of the boards I've been reading. I dripped the homemade yogurt which is supposed to get rid of the whey (which contains the casein). You end up with a cream cheese sort of mixture. I folded some honey into it and it doesn't taste bad but I didn't drip that much because I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. I'm dripping more as I'm typing this. I think it would be easier to get Shawn to take a teaspoon full than drinking a smoothie.