Keto-fied

Getting Keto-fied!

It's not as easy as one might think. Although, I'm not sure anyone who knows anything about the Ketogenic diet (from now on I'll be referring to as the Keto diet because it's just shorter to say and type out) would associate it with easy.

I'm getting more and more familiar with the "naughty" list. This is the list of ingredients that appear in lotions, soaps, ointments, and toothpastes that are no-no's for the keto diet.

Oh yeah, if I hadn't mentioned, the shipment came! The keto formula (Keto-Cal liquid, 4:1 ratio) arrived on Friday. I had never been so excited to see a health care shipment. When the delivery guy asked if he could bring in the boxes for me, I excitedly obliged. I was close to being ecstatic. He probably thought I was a little hopped up on candy canes but whatever. This is so different from our usual shipment. In fact, I'm fine not even answering the door and having the guy leave everything outside with past shipments. The formula is heavy, I have to put stuff away, boxes have to be disposed of, it's a pain. But this time...this time I was ready! I even wished the delivery guy a Merry Christmas and gave him a candy cane. Just kidding. But I did wish him a Merry Christmas.

All this excitement and you'd think Christian would start right away. Not quite.

He has to be eased into his new food. He's been on an elemental formula for a while now, over a year, in fact. So he can't just switch over night unless we are ready for bad reactions. So we have to transition Christian with a schedule that goes like this:

Day 1: 25% Old Formula/75% Keto-cal
Day 2: 50% Old Formula/50% Keto-cal
Day 3: 75% Old Formula/25% Keto-cal
Day 4: 100% Keto-cal

That's actually a pretty quick transition in the tube fed diet world.

And it's a lot of math and a lot of calculations with calories and high concentrations and extra water and...oh, it's all fascinating stuff.

Point being...drum roll please....tomorrow is day 4. 100% baby.

Some of the initial side effects of going on the diet are sleepiness and lethargy for the first few weeks as the brain begins to learn to pull energy from fat instead of carbs and sugar. There may also be some throwing up. We prepared for this by increasing his acid reflux medication. We haven't had any issues so far so we'll see when he goes full throttle.

We also have to test his urine for Ketones using Ketone strips. That's a little difficult. We just put cotton balls in his diaper but we have to be sure to get the soaked cotton balls before the absorbency chemicals from the diaper take everything. I just gave up until he's on Keto-cal 100%. No use because his ketones were negative, negative, negative.

So exciting stuff around here. Actually, besides my encounter with the delivery guy, it's been pretty calm. We stayed home pretty much all weekend, which is a good thing because we have some busy weekends in our near future including little sister's very first birthday party next weekend!

Now in thinking about everything I started getting ahead of myself and remember how much I loved November and my promise not to ask for things. It really took a lot of pressure off expectation. I was just thankful. No reason I have to stop just because it's December, right? So I'm going to continue being thankful because it makes me a lot more appreciative and helps me focus.

That being said, I'm thankful for the opportunity to try this diet for Christian and that we've been able to work with very capable and experienced doctors in order to administer this whole thing. I'm also thankful this ALL can be done from the comfort of our own home. Christian is appreciative of that, I'm sure of it.

As a side note, I'm also thankful for the local radio station that plays 24 hour Christmas music and if you haven't seen my facebook status, I'm very thankful for the Starbucks Caramel Brulee Frappuccino. Pretty sure if I was on the Keto diet, it would be on the naughty list.