What a Glorious Day

They say a picture is worth a thousand words - in this case, I'm saying about a million:

You read that right. Number 12 on our list is COW'S MILK!

I wish I could write this incredibly beautiful blog on how perfect and sweet this moment is for us. I wish I could pour all of the words in my heart onto this page and convey to you what we are feeling. But nothing I can write will begin to explain the joy, relief, or emotional delight we are experiencing right now. We are dancing, singing, praising, crying, and shouting from the roof top! 

What an overwhelming sense of God's Presence and faithfulness we are watching unfold right before our eyes.

Five days in and we've been able to complete a successful trial of Cow's Milk. You might remember me mentioning that Cow's Milk is one of the hardest proteins for the body to digest. Cow's Milk intolerance is really common in babies for this reason. So if Zachary's tummy can digest Cow's Milk - there is a good chance that the list of foods he can now eat is infinite. 

We're still going slow though, feeding him mostly foods on our approved list with some little bites of food from our plate, while trusting God with every ounce that he swallows. (Last night he even had a few bites of my homemade bread - oh how long I've been dying to feed this kid some of my home cooking). But just because he can tolerate Cow's Milk, it doesn't mean we are completely out of the woods.  His little body is still adjusting to the new diet and to change it drastically could set us back. And there's still a chance that there are quite a few foods he can't tolerate, so it's crucial that we don't overload his system and not be able to identify a reaction. But Zachary is DYING to eat. It's almost as if he's trying to communicate to us that he's ready for it. He reaches and screams for food off of our plate and with one single bite of our food he lights up with pure joy and satisfaction. He's constantly asking for "more" and insists on sitting on the counter (or in the sink) when I'm cooking so that he can watch.

We have spent many nights holding a screaming baby who couldn't sleep and many days trying to figure out what was wrong with Zachary. We laid him in the hands of God and waited as patiently as we could. We had to choose not to let MPI consume our life. We created a normal and safe eating environment for our son and never let his food define us as a family. We carried on as normal and never let Zachary know any different. However, the idea of having this disease behind us is unfathomable. To be able to take him to restaurants - to be able to leave the house for more than 2 hours without packing a cooler of food - to just take him to his Grammy's house without having to plan out each meal of the day - we can't possibly believe this is within reach. Without getting too far ahead of ourselves, we are astonished at how different our life would be without MPI. 

So today, October 11th, 2012, marks a day in history for The Mouws. It marks the first day that we can officially start the transition off formula and onto Cow's Milk. It marks the day that we can celebrate how much has changed from when we were told Zachary might not ever grow out of this to watching a 16 month-old drink milk from his sippy. It marks the beginning of the end to MPI. 

What a glorious day

What a wonderful day, today

Oh glorious

-David Crowder Band