Wednesday, April 18, 2012

How I Found Out My Son is Sensitive to ______ (fill in the blank)

After a moderately gung-ho approach to my new non-dairy lifestyle in February, my relationship with foods deteriorated rapidly. As I look through the photos of foods I'd prepared for this blog over the past two months, I see a record of my nursing babe's food sensitivities as I discovered them. Sort of a painful memory lane. Tazukuri little fishes? Out. Millet cakes? Those are out too. Homemade nut milks, banana-nut cookies, or anything coconut? Forget about it.
In retrospect it's kind of funny, or will be some day, that every single thing I planned to blog about ended up on the "reject" list.
I stopped pursuing novel foods in the beginning of March and came at it from the other side - an all-out elimination diet. I looked at the Dr. Cranton elimination diet, which was the most extreme one I knew of, and unfortunately it allows highly allergenic foods like nuts and fish, but disallows oats and rice.
I started instead with the Dr. Sears breastfeeding elimination diet, which recognizes that particularly for older babies (3+ months) the problem is usually with proteins - dairy, soy, nuts, wheat, eggs, beef, chicken, fish/shellfish, and corn. We got off to a rocky start, as two of the supposedly least-allergenic foods - lamb and millet - got a great big fail.
So where are we now? We've established a baseline of foods that make his symptoms go away. All fruits, most vegetables (some give him gas, haven't tried corn yet, and white potatoes are questionable), turkey, rice, oats.  I've been trying to reintroduce foods one at a time, but seem to be met with more discouraging results than positive ones lately. It's a slow process because it takes a few days to try a new food, and for every definitive "fail" it takes a few days to get back to normal and start again.
So, dear readers, all three of you, you are not forgotten; I hope to be back soon but can't quite handle the blog right now. Take care!

1 comment:

Alyse said...

Don't worry about us. Take care of your kid. I'll anxiously await your return! Good luck. :-)