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What they’ve been up to…

My Wedding Show is only 10 days away!! So I have been doing nothing but cakes lately.. But that doesnt mean the Miles and Aaron haven’t been up to a lot!
I am very thankful for a husband that sends me pictures at work all day long. It helps me feel a little more connected..
Miles got new toys! He loves his bead roller coaster…

So much so that he can’t take his hands off of it even to eat. by the way, this is the only way he holds his bottles now.. silly kid..
Did I mention he also got a train set???? I’m pretty sure Aaron bought it for himself. Miles doesn’t seem to mind..

He gets distracted by the tv very easily. Yesterday I was singing the little Einstein’s song and he immediately turned towards the off tv. I guess he thought rocket was on!
He has done some snoozing in the car…
And there has been lots and lots of tickling…
A little wipy eating…
(on a side note, we actually changed wipes. For some reason when you pulled the wipes out of these packages he would gag. Really strange, and kind of funny.. He loves playing with the empty package, but pulling the wipes out was rough on him. The new wipes seem to be going better..)

He loves his little elmo…

(please ignore the cord, I promise its not plugged into anything. It is just really his favorite toy. it’s actually 1 of 3 cords in his “toy pile”)

They sit outside and wait for me to come home everyday. This is by far my favorite time of the day…

He flashes cheezy grins and daddy..


And plays with his tutu!
And Aaron tries desperately to capture the 2 !!!!!!!!!! top teeth!

We are now up to 4 teeth. The bottom 2 came in right as he turned 7 months old. Almost the same exact time. (days a apart) and we noticed the first top tooth at church on Sunday. It had broken all the way through, and Aaron says the second top on has also.

In other big news, I think he may have officially doubled his birth weight! This typically happens between 4-6 months. I think by 9 months he will be there! He has plenty of 9-12 month outfits. But believe it or not, I still catch Aaron dressing him in 3 month outfits! And they still fit. He is mostly in 6 months.

He is getting soooo close to being able to crawl. He really wants too. I think one day it will just happen and he wont even realize it..

We’re toying with the idea of a new car set. Not because he doesnt fit. Heck, he’s probably still fit in his infant carrier till he’s two! But we’re just getting sick of it. I have the worst time making decisions about his kind of this. I have researched to the end of the earth and I think I might be coming up with a choice very soon!

Allergies are going well. We reintroduced sweet potatoes. It went well, but he hasnt had them again since. We also introduced peaches last weekend. That went well too. So we are on peaches, apple sauce and sweet potatoes. Right now he’s basically getting apple sauce every few days. Its the only one that we feel 100% comfortable with. This allergy still has me so baffled, its amazing how different kids with the same condition can be. Some can’t do apple sauce, yet its our only “safe” food. Thankfully, no more episodes! YAY!

Our New Normal…

I have been contemplating in my head how to start this story. How far back to do I go?

I would say we knew something “just wasn’t right” from the beginning. The first night at home his breathing was so raspy and sounded horrible. We were back at the hospital within hours of leaving but they said nothing was wrong. He was always uncomfortable, always grumpy, always spitting up all over everything.

I guess it wasn’t until this happened that we suspect something more was going on. Something more than colic or reflux.

Since this day he has had 6 similar episodes.

We visited with the same GI doctor that Aaron saw as a kid. She ruled out anything major and assumed it was probably an allergy.

We made an appointment with an allergist even though I had it pretty much figured out by this point and I wasn’t too worried.

Miles has a condition called Food Protien Intollerance Entercolitis Syndrome. (FPIES – pronounced F-Pies) FPIES is a non-IgE mediated immune reaction in the gastrointestinal system to one or more specific foods, commonly characterized by profuse vomiting and diarrhea. Basically his body just rejects certain foods. It isn’t an allergy. It doesn’t have hives, or wheezing and his throat wont swell up. His body just does everything possible to get rid of the food as soon as possible. And often as messy as possible!

There isn’t a whole lot known about FPIES. The reaction mimics some sort of stomach bug. It happens within hours of eating a trigger food and the vomiting lasts for hours and hours and hours. They often get very lethargic and gray, cold and clammy and have no energy. Thankfully once Miles snaps out of it, he is as good as new and acts like nothing happened. The last episode he had he fell asleep for just a minute and when he woke up he was the happiest baby we’d ever seen. Granted we were EXHAUSTED since it was about 3am. But he was happy and that is all that mattered to us.

Some of the trigger foods for the condition are:

*Grains (Oats, Rice, Barley)

*Legumes (green beans, peas, lentils)

*Dairy and Soy

*Sweet Potatoes

*Squash

*Poultry

His triggers so far have been:

*Oats (2x)

*Rice

*Bananas

*Avocado

*Carrots

Good news is that he will grow out of this by 5 years old.. and no one has ever died from it! Most patients head straight to the hospital the second vomiting starts because babies get dehydrated so quickly. We live really close to the hospital so we got the OK to stay home and monitor him and call 911 if things get bad,

The game plan right now is no new solid foods until at least 1 year. (I begged to let him still eat sweet potatoes and apple sauce, he loves his food so much I don’t want to take it away. Those are the only 2 things he’s been okay with so we are sticking with them)

No milk products until at least 24 months!

Right now he is still exclusively breast fed. I know I wont be able to keep up with him all the way to 24 months. So we will have to start supplementing with formula sometime. Get this.. the formula that he needs to be on. If he was 100% formula it would cost us $10 A DAY! And that makes my endless hours of pumping seem like a walk in the park.

ON TOP OF ALL THAT.. the doctor also wanted to check for “normal” allergies. The kind that make you break out in hives and swell up. I was pretty confident that we’d have no issues there. There aren’t any food allergies in our families so I didn’t think we had anything to worry about.

They test 17 things on his teeny tiny back. It was apparent really quickly that we had a problem or two.


Peanuts and Eggs showed an immediate reaction. There were other not as bad, but Peanuts and Eggs jumped right out at us.

As we stand he has FPIES and can not eat a list of foods that goes along with that. (but I can.. we think…again not a lot is known about it..) FPIES will all be trial and error. Which I hate. I hate making him sick. I hate that he associates eating with getting sick now.

We carry EPI Pens for his anaphylactic allergies (peanuts and eggs.. which I DO have to avoid.. ughhh) and he has an intolerance to dairy and soy. (which I also have to avoid)

We carry papers in each of our wallets and in his diaper bag on for the doctors at the ER, if we ever ended up there, or the paramedics on an ambulance.

We have an appointment in 3 months to discuss his nutrition and how we are going to handle all of this and still keep his weight up.

We count down the days until he grows out of all of this..

Although this is never what we wanted.. it is our new normal and we will all adjust!

***EDITED TO ADD (a year an a half later) Miles has NEVER been supplemented on formula. He has stayed on breastmilk this whole time. It hasn’t been easy, and I haven’t been able to do it naturally, but it’s really important for me to add that in there. ***

About Me..

There was a time when people would ask what I wrote about and I would stumble over my words, say a lot of umm’s and then spit out something along the lines of “uhhh.. I’m married and have a kid.”

I thought my life was defined by my perfect LDS (Mormon) lifestyle that had the perfect Celestial marriage and 1 perfect little boy.

When Miles was diagnosed with severe food allergies at 8 months old, I realized I found my blog calling. Writing for families with food allergies. It was perfect…

UNTIL.. my husband of 4 years suddenly left our family in the summer of 2011.

Then I thought.. “Oh goodie! I write a divorce blog. I can handle that..”

But in between leaning how to balance my life of being newly divorced, no longer a high profile corporate employee, a single mom, and a baker who owns her own business, I decided to put everything on hold and become a Gestational Surrogate.

So now? I have become a very loud surrogacy advocate. (with a splash of Gay right advocating thrown in on the side..)

I’ve been interview, published and guest posted on all things surrogacy.

I am an open book on ANY and ALL of these life callings I have. Please don’t ever hesitate to ask me any questions on any of my areas of expertise. (I’m also super humble, OBVS!)

In 2011 I took a leap to fulfill one of my greatest dreams. I joined the agency Growing Generations and became a Surrogate mom (or Gestational Carrier)
3 beautiful embryo’s were transferred into my uterus in July of 2011.
And in August we found out the couple will be parents in the Spring of 2012!
I delivered an amazing little boy, 4 weeks early, into the arms of his waiting parents in March of 2012.
My life will never be the same again.
(PLEASE feel free to email me any questions you have on surrogacy or becoming a surrogate. I couldn’t recommend it more! It has already changed my life.)

In the midst of carrying a wonderful surrogate baby I suddenly found myself a single mother.

When not buried up to my elbow in frosting and fondant you can find me:

Updating my cake website : That’s My Cake! (and it’s BLOG!)

and of course TWEETING at: @ryles

Some of the best AND WORST of me:

Miles’s birth story as told by my Doula

Discovering Miles’s Food Allergies

The Life of the working parent

The reason I have pumped for over 2 years

The dreaded “D” Word – Announcing my divorce

Thanks for keeping up with our little family!

Contact me anytime Ryley Eaton ThatsMyFam@gmail.com