A good plan that went awry

Mike and I have been struggling a bit with Jennica's new vitamin/mineral schedule. The whole regime (Oops.....should that be regimeN?) involves a total of 17 capsules or tablets absorbed at at some point through the day. My original response to this plan was, "Absolutely NO way! Thats too many pills for anyone to be popping, much less a 4-year-old!" And then came the reminder of what gluten and casein do to her neurological system. Followed by a reality check of the amount of food that she would need to consume during a day to get all of these nutrients in her diet. And lastly, the facts of what her body will do if these nutritional needs are not met. So.....here we are. It still feels WRONG to me, but the other options are much, much, much worse.

In any case, we actually started with powdered forms of many of these vitamins/minerals, with the intent of mixing it into her food. Yeah.......whatever. Great intent, but putting it into practice was an absolute disaster. We very quickly learned that we were going to waste hundreds of dollars mixing goop into her food and then having her refuse to eat it. Which accomplishes nothing. The smell/taste of some of this stuff is beyond vile. The marketing campaigns always claim, "New and improved taste". If thats new and improved, the original stuff must have tasted like nuclear waste. In the process of reaching a point that we knew we HAD to get this stuff into, we found out that our daughter can swallow pills like a pro. Finally, a positive point to the sensory-processing disorder--she has a very poor gag reflex. So......we've switched over to pills on everything. No more bad smells, no more bad tastes, and we know that she consumes the whole dose every day.

But, as previously-mentioned, its a total of 17 pills per day. UGH! We've split them up through the day to maximize absorption, but it doesn't work very well if we have to be at a basketball game in the evening, or somewhere else, as certain vitamins/minerals can't be taken too close to bedtime or there IS no bedtime until midnight or so. So......we read up and found out that there is actually no medical reason that the whole dose can't be taken at one time. After a few nights of missing the 2nd half in the day as we scrambled to pull together GFCF snacks for games, grab dinner, pick up girls, get boys to or from the school, etc.........we decided that today I would give her the dose of 16 all at once this morning (the 17th is taken AT bedtime). Great plan.........right?

WRONG! VERY WRONG! Jennica had therapy today in Olympia. Something in that heavy of a dose of something, didn't agree with her. About 30 minutes from our therapy appointment, she vomited all over the suburban. And vomited some more. And then some more. The kind that you instinctively know is going to be EVERYWHERE. As soon as it was all out of her stomach, she felt GREAT. Chatting to me that she needed new clothes. Asking how far it was to Renae's. Asking for paper towels, while I thought to myself that it was going to take a lot more than paper towels to fix this problem.

So, we got everything cleaned up and got through therapy. She has felt great ever since! Once we got back home, I dismantled the carseat (thank heavens that both girls still ride in carseats so I simply had her ride in Tiersten's after the "mess"), I cleaned the carpet, and cleaned the carpet some more, I cleaned the leather seat, I cleaned the back of the driver's seat, and I fumigated. And I briefly wished that I had traded in the suburban today rather than cleaning up this mess. :)

AAAHHHHHHhhhhhhh........The joys of parenthood. The vitamin/mineral supplement schedule is rigorously back to twice per day. Never again will I do those 16 little capsules all at once.