![\"\"](\"http:\/\/katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/horse.jpg\" "\\"horse\\"")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Back in the spring when it was clear something was wrong in our house, when Josie started behaving like a colicky baby, waking up for two hours every night and screaming for two hours every day, I took her to a new pediatrician. He came highly recommended for complex cases and was considered to be fairly woo-woo. A friend told me he had a naturopathic physician in his office<\/em> \u2013 my dream come true.<\/p>\n At our first appointment, he ordered more blood work, an EEG of the frontal lobe of her brain, and a breath tolerance test. The tests were going to be such a pain and I really didn\u2019t think they were going to find anything. Here was an MD I respected who was taking my thoughts and concerns seriously and making suggestions and all I wanted to do was roll my eyes and say, an EEG, really?<\/em><\/p>\n The EEG was awful. It didn\u2019t hurt her but I did have to hold her still for a long time then try to get her to fall asleep. The blood draw was hard to get. It took 3 visits and multiple tries. By the time we were done, Josie was crying, I was crying and I think the phlebotomist was on the verge.<\/p>\n When those tests came back normal, I decided we needed to take a break. The final piece, the breath tolerance test was supposed to take 3 hours and I just didn\u2019t have it in me. A few months had passed when I finally decided to schedule it, not because I thought it would yield illuminating results, but because I wanted to see this doctor again and I didn\u2019t feel like I could go back without following through with his recommendations.<\/p>\n So I started talking to Josie about the test a few days in advance. I explained that we\u2019d go in the morning, that we wouldn\u2019t have any breakfast, that she\u2019d drink a glass of special juice, then breathe into the tube every 30 minutes for 2 and a half hours. They\u2019d be able to tell by her breath if something (lactose) was giving her tummy ache. If she was unable to digest lactose they would find a level of hydrogen in her breath that would reach its peak after two hours \u2013 that\u2019s why we had to stay so long.<\/p>\n We arrived the morning of the test, loaded down with bags of her favorites books and toys and a few snacks for when it was all over. We\u2019d had three breath samples, and had been there for about an hour when the tech came out and told us we were done. We could go home.<\/p>\n But\u2026 Wait\u2026 I mean, we haven\u2019t even touched the DVD\u2019s yet. She\u2019s only just now started rolling on the floor. We still have toys to play with. We\u2019ve been pacing ourselves!<\/p>\n We were done. They sent us home after an hour because she\u2019d already reached the top level, demonstrated the strongest reaction possible. They didn\u2019t even want to see what happened when the level of gas in her tummy peaked at 2.5 hours.<\/p>\n Apparently our girl is totally off-the-charts lactose intolerant. You guys, I almost didn\u2019t have her take the test because it was a hassle<\/em> and because I didn\u2019t think it was the real problem.<\/p>\n This is something I\u2019ve had a problem with in the past. There are so many tests I wish I\u2019d had. The things I could have learned \u2013 that I had endometriosis, that I was allergic to gluten, that I was B12 deficient. I should have let the doctors do their jobs. Here\u2019s what I\u2019m learning: when looking for the cause you\u2019re bound to run into some dead ends, but you\u2019ve got to go down those roads to see where they lead anyway because eventually, one of them may actually lead to a castle or a princess or a pony in a field, and I\u2019ve always wanted a pony in a field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back in the spring when it was clear something was wrong in our house, when Josie started behaving like a colicky baby, waking up for two hours every night and screaming for two hours every day, I took her to a new pediatrician. He came highly recommended for complex cases and was considered to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,16,20,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mom","category-food","category-lactose","category-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1092,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions\/1092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katherinemalmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}