God will take care of you
Beneath His wings of love abide
Through everyday o’er all the way
He will care for you
God will take care of you
God will take care of you
When dangers fierce your path assail
God will take care of you
Through everyday o’er all the way
He will care for you
God will take care of you (1)
As a newborn Caleb was introduced to commercial cow’s milk formula at just 6 weeks of age due to an undetected tongue tie.
Caleb projectile vomited for the first time upon being given caffeine in the pediatric intensive care unit just over a week postpartum. Projectile and excessive vomiting continued at home.
As a newborn the pediatrician told me egg whites in particular were a common allergy for babies, removing egg whites did make a difference in how much Caleb screamed. That was of course until we started to try to bottle feed, thank God for the special needs bottle!
On February 24, 2017 Caleb’s general pediatrician recommended I buy wheat baby cereal and put it in Caleb’s bottles to help his food stay down in his tummy to try to stop the vomiting and silent reflux. When we got home from getting the cereal as I parked the truck a very strong feeling of dread came all over my body. I sat there for a moment analyzing this feeling and thinking about the box of wheat baby cereal we had just went through what felt like climbing a mountain to get. I decided to listen to my God-given mother’s intuition and not add it to the bottles…
On March 15, 2017, Caleb’s Pediatric Gastroenterologist (G.I.) recognized immediately, before anyone else, that Caleb was allergic to corn, within just a few minutes of meeting. He also told me he didn’t think Neocate would work as I had just started the trial the night before. He was right about both!
Between 3 and 5 months of age, Caleb had a constant scaly red patch of skin between his eyes and suffered from silent reflux.
Caleb had a series of x-ray studies done of his esophagus and the opening to his stomach in addition to another series he had been through in February for analyzing his swallow.
At first Caleb’s body accepted Ready to Feed Alimentum (RTF Alimentum), a highly processed commercial formula created by hydrolyzing (pre-digesting) cow’s milk and the red patch and reflux went away…but then they came back and worse. His reflux got to the point that it would come up into his sinuses and out his nose! It was really bad.
Caleb’s red excema patch between his eyes was accompanied by severe silent reflux, both went away with the removal of cow’s milk protein.
In May 2017 I credit God for helping me to “win the lottery” by getting a diet for myself that worked with Caleb so he could get away from formula, which was obviously not working, and back on his mother’s milk.
On May 25, 2017 Caleb tested positive for wheat, but just a trace positive. If I had been giving him wheat protein every bottle every few hours day and night for 13 weeks as originally instructed to do…that could have been an anaphylactic test result. The more the body is exposed to an allergen, the more sensitive it becomes and the more extreme the immune response. Praise God for our gift of intuition.
During the summer of 2017, since Caleb had tested negative to pork, chicken and cashews I invested in the highest quality corn free soy free local pork and chicken, organically raised and freshly butchered. I also bought organic cashews online and dutifully soaked and dehydrated them…vomiting and hives from the pork, bad poo poo from the chicken and terrible crazy diarrhea that just would not go away from the cashews…Except these symptoms wouldn’t start right away so it would make it confusing. I would think a food was working and after a week add a new food but then all of a sudden symptoms were happening. He was developing new allergies at a delayed rate as I introduced new food proteins into my diet!
Sometime during that summer I also tried to add chocolate back into my diet, organic dark chocolate of course! Hives. Chocolate was out for mom.
In June or July 2017 I found that I was able to give Caleb, without an issue, egg yolk. Although he gagged on it if it was not watered into a liquid (I now know because of his tongue tie which was finally discovered on July 23, 2017 – a HUGE answer to prayer).
On July 26 I wrote “Allergy update: I tried to eat one cherry and one grape cause I love cherries, he got hives, too early too fast. He is gagging and unable to eat the thick baby food due to the tongue tie so we are going to stick with just broth and breastmilk for awhile longer and I will remain restricted. I also need to avoid chicken I found in addition to the pork, wheat, egg whites, dairy, corn, and salicylates. BUT his stools have improved as long as I keep allergens out and broth going in, he had a thick, creamy and a few “seeds” this past week (thank you LORD). I did try some sheep yogurt after which made sour and runny again, so I just need to be patient, long suffering, trusting, praying and PRAISING the Lord to get us through.”
Sometime in August or September 2017 Caleb had an extreme vomiting reaction to egg yolk. I didn’t realize it was the egg yolk at first as it had been a safe food for us for awhile. When I re-trialed a tiny amount though, the same thing plus diarrhea! Egg yolk was now out too!
As mentioned in my “Healing a Tongue Tie” blog, the Lord provided a prayer team of people to carry Caleb and I through. I got this message right when I needed it in August 2017, a message from a very powerful prayer warrior named Laverne:
“Thank you Lord for Caleb. Thank you Lord for Caleb this child shall be great before You and shall do exploits in Your name. I decree that no sickness or plague will come upon Caleb, in the name of Jesus. I decree soundness, health and wholeness into the spirit, soul and body of Caleb, in the name of Jesus. I speak wholeness, soundness and perfection into the heart, eyes, ears Skin, bones, teeth of Caleb, in the name of Jesus. Let the respiratory, digestive and circulatory systems of little Caleb be normal, strong and healthy, in the name of Jesus. I bind every negative reports from whoever in the name of Jesus. Lord, fill the parents with Your joy, glory, peace and love in the name of Jesus. Lord, keep your covering over this precious child that you love so dearly thank you Lord for hearing this prayer amen. Will keep praying especially over Caleb food. Naomi, keep asking the Holy Spirit for guidance on what to feed little Caleb. Blessing upon you and your family! Love Laverne! Hallelujah hallelujah it is well with little Caleb!”
I knew Laverne was right. I needed to ask God for specific guidance. I needed to know very specifically from Him what foods and how to prepare those foods so my son could be blessed by food, not cursed. Sure we could have just let things get to the point where invasive medical procedures began again, but I didn’t want to get there. So I approached God’s throne of grace, petitioning Him for His help daily…and just like He led the way for the tongue tie to be revealed He began to lead the way for how to get Caleb out of this mess. He tenderly and gracefully addressed our needs for health by providing answers for not only our physical needs, but also by providing answers for our mental and spiritual health as well, even with things that were way off my radar as I was very focused working with my son’s therapists each week and on trying to make progress with food. In fact the answers from God came into our lives so intertwined together that the physical I feel is inseparable from the mental or the spiritual answers. We needed them all.
My first clue came through two free DNA stool analyses for Caleb showing a comparison that revealed how vitally important it was for Caleb to have prebiotics (foods that feed probiotics) in his diet since we were relying so heavily on lamb stock and fat. Caleb needed his breastmilk sugars and he needed alternatives as well, complex fibers or carbohydrates of some sort. This was all very encouraging as my mother’s intuition had always told me how important my breastmilk was for my baby and now I had another confirmation of that. I had been struggling with my intuition since some well intentioned women were encouraging me to wean my son, but I just didn’t feel like that was what God wanted me to do. Getting that confirmation through those tests were good for Caleb and I both mentally and relationally as well since breastmilk continued to bond us at a deep level even if it were through a pump and bottle, we were trying back to breast efforts still as well.
God didn’t stop there, His answers continued to come and they came big as we journeyed up and out of the hole we had fallen into…but it did take some time and there were discouraging patches along the way, like in December 2017, right after his first birthday, Caleb ate a crumb of a wheat pretzel. This resulted in mucus for poop. Things kind of stayed discouraging until March when we made some major progress only to have afterwards a step back again. The ebb and flow was real. Like the pushing stage of labor all over again. I was ready for the birth of our deliverance.
On April 2018 after getting some more patch allergy testing I was nervous to try the ones that he tested negative for because of how Caleb had developed new allergies the last time I followed that road. I knew in my mother’s heart there had to be a way to address the root issue of all of this! I didn’t want to create new allergies but I needed a solution, my son needed a variety of foods for a sound nutritional diet. A solution that would feel right to my mommy’s heart. I needed that answer to prayer. I still needed God’s continued guidance. Thankfully juicing vegetables really became a major help and another stepping stone up and out for us. I began introducing all sorts of foods via the juicer which Caleb could swallow without gagging and they were easy and quick for him to digest. I juiced all kinds of veggies to get a power-shot of energy and vitamins into Caleb’s body and to help expand his diet. I started to try to add coconut oil to Caleb’s veggie juice and at first it was fine, but eventually on July 18, 2018 Caleb reacted with vomiting and again with a retrial. I was able to continue the juicing without the coconut oil. But my cry stayed before the throne of the Almighty God.
Summer 2018 rolled around and after relying heavily on lamb stock to supplement breastmilk Caleb’s body became ultra sensitive to meat and meat stock by getting hives from leftovers or from meat and meat stock that was cooked too long. I had started cooking a fresh thing of meat and its stock every night in a dutch oven and then flash freezing his meals every night for the next day and then defrosting for every meal in order to avoid hives. It was a lot to do every day! At the very same time I felt convicted by God to start trying to get out and make other mom friends and Caleb needed to start making friends too. My response to this was “how on earth am I supposed to have time to do that Lord?” I still needed to pump, I needed to do all that cooking, I needed to clean bottles and maintain as much order in my house as possible, and adding “social-time” in didn’t really feel like it was something I could swing or even a priority for that matter! However, the conviction persisted so I obeyed God and reached out to another mom I had met online and who also was following a lot of the same natural food ideas for her children too. She was also a Christian and a military spouse. We could relate on so many levels. She was another Godsend. God began to address mine and Caleb’s health by giving me a friend who was a blessing beyond blessings. Someone who could understand me and who was already there and actually well ahead of me in the trenches. She was another mother-warrior fighting for her children on her knees in prayer and on her bare feet in the kitchen. I just have to take a moment to say I am barefoot and proud. I wear my baby on my hip as a prized jewel. Our babies are precious beyond any paper degree or monetary income. If and when I can I will gladly pour myself out as a mother at home in the kitchen, changing diapers, kissing yayas (Spanish slang for owies) and cleaning up the 10-millionth mess of the day. God bless mother’s of all walks of life, working or stay-at-home, but there is no shame in staying at home.
Caleb playing in the water mid-July at our first play date with our dear friends (not pictured). Alaska is a beautiful place to have a play date!
Laverne’s prayer was coming to fruition as my new friend introduced me to a fermentation system called Pickl-It. I had seen a brief improvement in Caleb’s situation when in March of 2017 I was able to work up to getting 2-3 tablespoons of commercial unpasteurized sauerkraut juice in him per meal and had been able to introduce a lot of food proteins with no problem, pretty much all vegetables (this was before I started juicing). However, we experienced a major setback when following instructions from some certified GAPS professionals online, I tried a fermented garlic brine recipe they provided and personally guided me through. I used a starter and fermented it for about a week. Caleb really like the brine and wanted a lot of it, but then his poor baby mouth broke out in some sort of reaction causing him to have a painful tongue and mouth. I had to pull that and the kraut juice. We struggled to get back to where we had been and although Caleb had been able to eat broccoli with 2-3 tablespoons of saurkraut juice he was unable to without…this was a clue, he needed ferments, but I needed a better solution, for us the mason jar even with a fancy lid didn’t cut it, we needed something else.
THANK GOD FOR PICKL-IT.
Rutabaga, pumpkin, beet kvass, rainbow carrot, red onion, french fries and pumpkin juice.
Pickl-It. Anaerobic fermentation. Pickl-It garlic cannot even be consumed until it has fermented for 6 months, saurkraut, 3 months (most ferments are moved to a fridge after being on counter for up to a week). Thankfully beet kvass took only only 21 days to prepare. Caleb’s body easily accepted EVERY Pickl-It fermented foodstuff. Pickl-It beet kvass was our game changer. Caleb and I were both able to easily add every food protein his body had not had a reaction to with ease, as long as it was fermented in the Pickl-It jar. Rice, lentils, potatoes, and so much more. I started to ferment everything, even safe foods from before like rutabaga and asparagus to maximize nutrients. Fermentation makes all foods easier to digest and the vitamins and nutrients more bio-available as I’ve learned from reading information from the founder, Kathleen. Her son recovered from having early-childhood schizophrenia and autism…because of prayer and Pickl-It (2). Kathleen has also shared with her customers that she was unexpectedly rid of her severe cat allergy through Pickl-It fermented foods! The Pickl-It jar is truly airtight as opposed to the mason jar. This creates a higher quality ferment with a higher ratio of lactic acid bacteria versus acetic acid (acetic acid burns).
I should mention that in September 2018, shortly after starting Pickl-It, I introduced home-rendered cow’s ghee. I must not have strained it well enough resulting in traces of cow’s milk protein present in the ghee because Caleb got mucus for poop along with a trace of blood. I withdrew the cow’s milk protein and kept on focusing on what I knew worked, Pickl-It foods and goat ghee plus grass-fed lamb, bison and beef.
On September 28, 2017 I got another clue about Caleb’s physical needs after he got terrible stools from scraping a bowl I used to make fat bombs with honey…I re-trialed by increasing fat alone and got the same results. Ironically in my quest to get as much fattening foods into Caleb as possible too much fat caused problems too! I thanked the Lord for showing me everything I needed to know to custom tailor Caleb’s diet just for his body.
As Caleb and I continued to add more and more foods with Pickl-It. We finally began to feel like life could be a little bit more normal. Still I hated knowing that if I messed up on timing for ferments or if I made a mistake with a staple that we could be left too short on food. Then another friend shared with me a pastor online. She said “God will send you to the right sermon”. I ended up watching several of his sermons, one of them about spiritual warfare. At the end of the sermon the pastor tells about a time that a mom of a four year old boy brought her son to him for prayer because the boy had a LOT of allergies. The pastor followed his simple method for deliverance using spiritual warfare and the little boy went home and was completely delivered from all allergies! I was telling my sister about this on the drive to her house after Caleb and I flew down a few weeks ago and then lo and behold the very first sermon at her church in her little town of only 3,000 people was specifically about the same type of spiritual warfare that the pastor had talked about online, also there had been a sermon recently with the same exact sermon topic at my church in Alaska. I was wondering, “Lord, what are you trying to tell me?”.
The Spiritual. I decided to go visit the pastor that preached the sermon at my sister’s church. He admitted to me that the sermon was out of his comfort zone but agreed to pray for Caleb. He invited me to pray over Caleb too after he was done. I did. I prayed. I followed the advice from the sermon I had watched online and I repented for any authority I had given to anything else when Caleb was in the womb. I had struggled with fear and anxiety about my baby’s well-being throughout my pregnancy because it had taken me 5 years and 3 IUIs to get pregnant. I had a dream the week Caleb was born that a big scary fast black spider crawled onto my belly while I was sleeping and pierced through into my baby, i hit “it away” so hard that I woke myself up by slapping my belly… I repented for any way that this fear and anxiety could have given authority to any other spirit than the Holy Spirit and I prayed for the Holy Spirit alone to have authority in my son’s body and for him to be healed from all his allergies, in the name and by the blood of Jesus! Preparing for my meeting with the pastor I also went through some prayers ahead of time sent to me at the perfect time by another friend without me asking her, they were dealing with topics that the spiritual warfare sermons I had watched online dealt with too.
That spider in my dream the week Caleb was born might have pierced him but Jesus was pierced and hung onto the tree so that Caleb could be delivered from all plans or works of the enemy. (see 1 John 3:8)
Deliverance.
After this prayer time with the pastor I decided to follow the advice I had received from some of Caleb’s doctors to periodically retrial some of his allergens. We went home and I, in faith, ordered some pork, dairy, chicken and eggs to trial, I tried ordering the highest quality possible. I planned to slowly start trialing his allergen foods beginning Saturday. Well we didn’t make it that long. Friday morning I was curling my hair and overheard my niece tattling to her mom/my sister that Caleb was eating her Cap’n Crunch which she eats with cow’s milk!…I literally skidded on the wood floors trying to get to the dining room fast enough, but I was too late Caleb was sitting on the dining room table with highly processed cereal dye-colored cow’s milk running down his chin! I decided instead of running out to buy activated charcoal pills to wait and see what happened since the pastor and I had prayed over Caleb for him to be healed of his allergies with only the Holy Spirit in control. About an hour after eating highly processed cow’s milk infused with Cap’n Crunch he had a beautiful brown stool. He had not had a healthy stool with cow’s milk since he was a 3 months old! So I started feeling a bit braver and while we were at a car dealership for my sister in Louisville I decided to let him have some Dove mint hot chocolate in water (his first direct exposure to chocolate), then at a family fun center later he was refusing his banana I had brought but we were both hungry so I let him have some tater tots, barbecue sauce and a tiny bit of my sister’s Diet Coke…healthy poops continued!! So the next morning I actually let him drink cow’s milk, eat butter, and a little bit of egg and it was fine! He was not reacting! Then he had bacon and chicken! He has now trialed all previous allergens and so far so good! Praise God.
Caleb enjoying cow’s milk.
Deliverance. My son has been delivered. He still has some sensitivities that I have observed from letting him eat too many unfermented factory-processed foods, but he CAN eat them on occasion if he has to and will not have an over-reactive immune response in his intestines or otherwise. Pickl-It began as an answered prayer for Kathleen and her son, then it became our answer to prayer too. We are now successfully even doing Pickl-It Sourdough, pancakes, rolls, and even sourdough banana bread. Amazing. I’m getting ready to make my first batch of sourdough cinnamon rolls, hopefully they come out good! My baby will get to have an actual cake on his third birthday. Hallelujah. We have waited a long time for this. I can even look forward to making sourdough pizza with fermented veggies and fermented marinara sauce along with his favorite meats!
Caleb enjoying Pickl-It sourdough pancakes and cow’s milk kefir in February 2019.
This was Caleb’s “cake” from his second birthday. Fermented purple sweet potato never looked so good! Along with dates, honey and a maple syrup drizzle it tasted good too!
Pastor Jared was glad enough to take a photo with Caleb at a potluck event at the church called Kill It and Grill It. Not so sure Caleb felt the same about the photo but he had a lot of fun at the event, we got to taste things like raccoon BBQ, squirrel dumplings, pheasant dumplings and more! Caleb really liked the deer. What a cool event that we would not have gone to if it were not for God’s deliverance for Caleb. May God bless Pastor Jared, his wife and children with an abundance of His Spirit, Power and Might in Jesus’ name.
We are on our way out. We have left allergies behind and in Jesus name we will leave all sensitivities behind too. I continue to claim perfectly beautiful poop as God intended for my son to have at the beginning in Jesus’ name. God fights for my son. He sees inside Caleb’s body. He knows what my son’s body needs. I listen for His answers to prayer. He leads me to friends, to doctors, to therapists and to pastors, He leads me where we need to go. He is the Good Shepherd.
Hallelujah.
My body has been blessed as well. I don’t even have to wash my face and my skin is still clear and beautiful. I have naturally regular cycles for the first time in my life and the debilitating painful menstrual cycles are gone. If I eat too many potatoes the pain and the acne start to come back. These are clues, my body talking to me that my health too is found in a big way through anaerobic fermented food. I have faith that I will be able to conceive again, naturally this time and this time I will be ready. I will be drinking kefir every day and consuming fermented foods every regular meal , Lord-willing. I will bless and honor my body with the food it eats and the bodies of my children with God-honoring foods.
God didn’t just lead me to fermented foods, He led me to Him, He led me to perfectly matched Christian friends and He provided amazing medical professionals to support Caleb’s body with therapy and sound advice. We are made up of body, mind and spirit. I truly believe that we cannot attain true health without the Holy Spirit ruling supreme over our members physical, mental and spiritual. In Christ we are truly balanced. In Him we can truly thrive. My pastor in Alaska taught last summer that we reflect God not only with our physical image but also in that we are tri-part beings made up of the physical, the mind (emotion, imagination and intellect) and the spirit. He taught that it was important for our physical bodies and our minds to come under the authority of the Holy Ghost in order to fulfill God’s plans for us. For Caleb and I, I feel like God’s plan on our lives includes a requirement for a healthy body and a healthy mind under that leadership of the Holy Spirit. For example, my infertility was directly getting in the way of God’s calling on my life to be a mother but I now know that what I eat has a lot to do with how fertile I am! I strongly feel that Caleb and I are called to be as healthy as we possibly can mentally, physically and spiritually as an act of worship toward the One Who gave us life and our body to begin with.
…
How can God help you today? What are you facing that He can set you free from? He may do it miraculously all at once at the altar…or He may tell you to make a new friend and to try a fermentation system in addition to prayer like he did for me. However it may look like for you, trust Him. Seek Him. Cry out to Him. Bless Him.
“And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.” Revelation 12:11
“But thus saith the LORD, Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered: for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children.” Isaiah 49:25
Caleb enjoying some food while running errands with mom. Freedom!
References:
1. Songwriters: Jeremy Bose / Tiffany Arbuckle Lee
2. Read Kathleen’s (Pickl-It Founder) Story here:
Proclaim His Whisper 