Issues

You may have noticed a few photos have disappeared off my blog.

I’ve got a slight technical hitch, that I am trying to resolve, and in testing the possible causes, removed some photos.

I will put them all back up shortly – sorry for the inconvenience.

Kylie

UPDATE:

The support guys checked out my blog, found the problem immediately and fixed it for me. Awesome service!!

Thanks

Sources of Calcium

I have been worried about Bella’s Calcium intake for some time, and Mum brought it up on the phone this morning. She can’t have cow’s milk, and won’t drink Soy milk, rarely eats Soy products (such as soy yogurt and custard). She is incredibly thin, seems to eat well, but has nowhere near the calcium intake of Milo, who eats Cheese and yogurt and drinks soy and cow’s milk like they are going our of style!!

Bella often suffers from achy legs at night. I also suffered from similar leg pains as a growing child, and in fact still do from time. I now interpret these pains as the body stripping the Calcium from my leg bones for other uses… this is most likely Kylie rubbish ). I thought I’d better do some research to understand how to modify Bella’s diet to get the calcium from the food she eats.

After reviewing the calcium content of various “alternate foods”, I’ve realised that it is near impossible to get Bella to eat enough Calcium rich food to reach the recommended daily intakes:

0-6 months	210 mg
7-12 months	270 mg
1-3 years	500 mg
4-8 years	800 mg
9-18 years	1,300 mg
19-50 years	1,000 mg
51-70+ years	1,200 mg

Reference: Havard Uni Health Services

• Babies – 0 to 6 months (breastfed) recommended dietary intake (RDI) 300mg
• Babies – 0 to 6 months (formula-fed) RDI 500mg
• Babies – 7 to 12 months RDI 550mg
• Children – 1 to 3 years RDI 700mg
• Children – 4 to 7 years RDI 800mg
• Children – 8 to 11 years (girls) RDI 900mg, (boys) RDI 800mg
• Children and teenagers – 12 to 15 years (girls) RDI 1000mg, (boys) RDI 1200mg
• Teenagers – 16 to 18 years (girls) RDI 800mg, (boys) RDI 1000mg.

Reference: Victorian Government Better Health website

On to the supplements.

We have tried a number of supplements to date. Bella is very resistant to chewing tablets -and if you’ve ever chewed a calcium tablet you would understand why… its like eating chalk!!!

Then I found a Children’s Chewable Calcium supplement. Horray. Unfortunately, after eating these tablets, Bella was sent home from school very distressed, with severe stomach pains caused by cramps and constipation – which I suspect was caused by the supplements. They contained Calcium-Citrate. I’m not sure if the stomach cramps/constipation was caused by this compound, or the fillers used to make the tablets taste ok. (We had checked there was no diary or other allergens).

Our latest and most successful plan is “Calmax” powder. At $46 for 175g, it ain’t the cheapest, however 1 teaspoon provides 406mg of calcium. We dissolve it in hot water and add it to raspberry cordial. As we don’t normally let the kids drink cordial, Bella thinks its a treat. So far so good…. but she still get cramps from time to time.

Bella’s Party

It was Bella’s 7th birthday in June and we had a birthday party. Bella persuaded me to have a slumber party… which I must say, I was pretty apprehensive about!!  We had 7 girls for the “party”, and 3 stayed over. I’m surprised at how smoothly it went - and I’d actually do it again!!

We had party food on arrival (without too much sugar!!) and played party games including pass-the-parcel, musically statues (a fave), pop each others balloon, pass the sock and a memory game. We had lots of prizes and the house was a buzz.

Once the “party” was over the rest of the girls played quietly with dolls, painted nails and “watched” a movie (they were much keener on playing with the dolls and being little girls!)

I eventually got them to sleep about midnight – after several trips to the loo and 1 blood nose. They woke early at 7am. We made pancakes for breakfast. Then it was outside to play basketball and run around. We ended the sleep-over with the piñata, which was a lovely climax. Kids and lollies

I made the birthday cake – which was a complete disaster!! Though the kids didn’t care at all. I tried to make a “barbie cake” – like the ice-cream cake you see. I used the “Bella friendly cake” recipe… but it was way to soft and fresh to use to stand up the doll – so I opted for a sitting down barbie cake – with a “chocolate throne”. I thought it was very funny, but the kids thought it was awesome… lucky they not very discerning!

Here’s a couple of pics of the cake. It has white icing for the dress, chocolate icing for the throne and flower, and flower marshmallows for decoration. 

The Road to “Normal”

Four weeks ago we took Bella to her first appointment with a new allergy specialist, Jo Smart. Jo’s process of meeting, skin tests and review was far better than the drawn out process we were used to at the Children’s hospital. And Jo has a lovely “bed-side” manner.

Her skin prick test results were surprising. Cow’s Milk had virtually no reaction, egg white quite small and raw salmon none… however the salmon extract produced a solid positive reaction.

Interestingly, the first “control” test did not get much a reaction either – so I don’t have enormous faith in the results. (Apparently results can be affected by excema under the skin (?), and Bella had a little excema on her arms). I gather Jo wasn’t convinced either – as she also sent us for blood tests (RAST tests) to confirm the skin prick tests. We are expecting to get some feedback on the results of the blood tests any day now.

Bella is booked into a Milk challenge in October and an Egg challenge in November. So keep your fingers crossed for her! She is already getting excited about having cheese and chocolate!

We might be on the trail to a “normal” life yet…..

 Click on the photo to link to a bigger image on flickr