Monday, April 28, 2008

Good Milk In, Bad Milk Out

As I posted last weekend, there were a few rough nights with the boy, and all symptoms pointed gastric.

Things got better this week, but still weren't back to an acceptable level, and you can tell he is in pain.

Joan described the symptoms to the pediatricians' office and was told to first try cutting all dairy out of her diet.

Yup, anything derivative of Cow Juice, she cannot consume.
Babies don't have all of the digestive equipment to handle cow's milk, but some are sensitive enough that they can't even handle the proteins that make it through in Mom's milk. He may be one of them, or he may not be. We'll find out eventually, but they say it can take up to three weeks for the proteins to get out of her system.

Of all of the things to cut out, why did it have to be dairy?
To give you a little idea of how that will affect Joan's eating habits, here is a little diagram I have prepared showing the distribution of our diet, using the "food pyramid" scheme:

WALLACEpyramid

Notice the significance of dairy.
Not quite the distribution the gubment recommends. (see official USDA chart below)




Her first challenge last week was finding something at Coyote Blues that didn't have cheese or sour cream. I know it is heresy to even say that, but she really had to do it.

I hope, for his sake, that dairy actually is the problem. But, for her sake, I wish it was something less intrusive to fix.

We'll see.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why not start him on formula if it is causing so much drama over breast feeding? I feel bad for Joan to have to do away with all of that and then it might not even be the answer.

Joan said...

The vast majority of formulas are cow's milk based. Even most of the "special" ones are soy based, and it is not uncommon for babies to be sensitive to soy protein if they are sensitive to cow's milk protein, so it is likely he would have to be on the super-special $40 a day formula. Cutting out dairy and soy are just things I'll have to do. I'd rather just deal with it and be able to breastfeed than go through trial and error with every different formula before we find one that agrees with him.