The First Five Days

Stage one of the GAPS introduction diet was a lot rougher than I expected.  I knew how to make good meat and bone broth and yummy soups with them.  I am used to eating lots of vegetables, the kids are too.  We had just never eaten them for breakfast, lunch and dinner! Not to mention snacks, which we needed plenty of.  Newsflash; when you are only eating things that are really easy to digest, you are hungry every other hour.  I felt like I was fasting.

The second day the kids rebelled.  I was glad I could empathize with them.  I kept telling them "we can do hard things," explaining what this was doing for our bodies and most importantly that it wasn't permanent, we are going to eat our favorite things again eventually.  The oldest two totally balked at having soup for breakfast, but number 3 did fine eating consistently through the day.  By dinner the other two were eating good sized portions and feeling more chipper.

Day three started out absolutely horrible.  All three of the kids refused to eat breakfast.  Number 2 cried that his belly hurt and they were all downright lethargic. My resolve was wavering.  I introduced egg yolks, not because my kids we big fans, but because I wanted to get moving through this intro because I didn't know how much more I could take.  I started offering drops of honey for eating portions of soup, which got us through lunch, but Number 3 had no appetite.  He had eaten only a few spoonfuls all day, I offered a wide variety of things and wasn't the least bit interested.  I didn't think he would even notice the diet change because he only asks to eat what he sees other people eating.  He always ate soup and cooked vegetables so well on a regular basis.  He puked that afternoon.  His belly was thin and was looking sickly.

The next day, I was so worried about my youngest. He threw up two more times and only drank water all day.  His balance was worse than normal, he took a 5 hour nap and he didn't smile.   I forced a bit of chicken stock to keep his electrolytes up.  I scoured books and the internet, trying to figure out if he had a stomach bug, if he was detoxing or if he was making himself sick by refusing food.  Looking back, he is not characteristically stubborn at all, has not had any detox symptoms since and did run a fever two days before we started, so I'm thinking bug.  The other two barely ate anything for breakfast, but did do well with lunch and dinner and were upbeat all afternoon.

After the kids went down, my husband tempted me with a bowl of gelato and I was ready to partake.  I started going through the past few days in my head and realized how important it has been to be able to completely empathize and know that a body can exist on these foods alone.  I denied that gelato in all of it's mulberry glory.  Dang, I am disciplined!  That night I made a pureed, super carrot-y ginger soup for breakfast in high hopes of winning over the kids.

Day five was a turning point.  They ate breakfast!  All of them!  Carrot ginger was a hit, along with the yogurt cream I served on top.  I made small "pancakes" with ground, soaked almonds, zucchini and eggs, which put us in Stage 3.  They each got one and were super excited to have something other than soup.  Number 3 had definitely lost weight in the past few days, but ate small portions throughout the day and had a really good dinner.  I had a good talk to them about the only way we can add new foods is if we eat really well every day.  I think they got that, and just as I thought, my youngest was not rebelling because of the food because the very next morning when the kids asked "What's for breakfast?"  Number 3 happily replied "soup."