Mom
guilt is a pretty rough thing. Today I am feeling it a bit more than
normal. I'm feeling guilty because we took Noah out for his Birthday
lunch at a place that is supposed to be really good about having gluten free
options and are careful about cross contamination. I listened to and
trusted our server and as a result Ben ate gluten. I should have known to
double check her and when I did and realized Ben had gotten gluten, I felt so
bad for not checking first. It is not impacting him as much as it has
other times, and he is doing pretty good
over all, but I can tell he is in some pain.
After
a full day we finally got home, and I got to work a while on restoring my
computer ( my hard drive failed and I lost 20% or my data and all
my programs). The new photo software
program has a face recognition feature, and I noticed a trend on the pictures
of Ben. Up until he started Kindergarten,
he was chubby and bright eyed for the most part. But then the weight loss and behaviors
started to happen. I knew at the time there
was something going on with Ben, and I just could not put my finger on what it
was. In addition to losing weight,
his eyes often had those dark circles under them. The doctor called it
allergies and did not think we needed to be concerned about the weight loss,
but I wouldn’t let it go. We finally got
him tested for Celiac Disease and that was it.
Looking at this collage the progression of the disease is pretty easy to
see. Ben went from a happy, chubby
little boy, to a sometimes happy, sometimes crabby little boy who looked sick,
and is now heading back to being a chubby little boy as he has gained 10 pounds
in the last 6 months.
The
photo in the center is the one that caught my eye the most and made me realize how
bad he must have felt while is little body was not absorbing nutrients. More Mom guilt. I should have caught it earlier. I am taking photos of him all the time. Why wasn’t I comparing them to past
photos?
The
first row of the collage above shows him as what appears to be a healthy 3-5
year old.
The
second row shows him when the celiac started to become an issue and one photo
from right after diagnosis. 6-8
The
third row shows him on the road to recovery, age 8 to present, and able to gain
weight and take in nutrients again.
Thanks
to the new photo software, I should be able to compare photos and plan to do so
from here on out. But there is still mom
guilt……..
