Those days
While Declan was playing in the bath tonight I opened up the medicine cabinet to find these goodies staring at me.
When Declan was about 6 weeks old I came to the realization that he was sensitive to dairy.
Back up to the second week home from the hospital. Declan would cry, a lot. He would get gassy and cry and cry and wiggle around trying to get comfortable. No amount of leg pumping would help. It was a really hard time for both of us. One night I asked Bryan to pick up some baby gas-x on his way home just to see if it would help. The minute after we gave him the dose he seemed happier. It was a miracle! Except it stopped working. So we bought Gripe Water. My mom bought us Colic Calm. I picked up another brand. Everything seemed to help for the first few times and then it stopped. When I mentioned it to our pediatrician she said that maybe he was just going to be colicky, and gave us a few tips on how to soothe a colicky baby. Well, after some research on my end I found that many babies have a sensitivity to diary. You can read more about it here (scroll to Dairy Sensitivity in Babies). This really hit me since I was drinking a big glass of milk when I first read about it! I immediately cut out the obvious dairy in my diet, as well as soy (which meant iced coffee in the morning. straight up. ugh).
Now whenever I hear about little babies being colicky the first thing I ask is if the mama tried cutting out dairy. (This only works if they are breastfeeding. Most formulas are made with dairy or soy. It looks like Similac offers a non-dairy non-soy option, but I don’t know much about it.) It is a little inconvenient, but when you think about the huge change it can make in your baby and in turn in your life, it is very worth it! And luckily most children outgrow the sensitivity by the time they are old enough to have cow’s milk. I reintroduced it at 11 months and we switched Declan to all cows milk with no problems.
This motherhood stuff is tricky business. Luckily there are a lot of other mamas out there writing down their stories, and a lot of great resources to help guide us in the right direction.
I’ve mentioned them before, but if you are local to Southern California be sure to check out Milkalicious for all of your breastfeeding needs!
5 comments
I wish more people would talk about these things. New babies are tough, but not impossible, there are solutions, but they are often so hard to find among the craziness that is Dr. Google/babycenter and all that stuff. I think that all pediatricians offices should have lactation consultants available as part of their services! (And this is from someone who only breastfed for 3 months – it’s just frustrating!!)
Sorry that was an angry comment! Great post!
Lucy was the same way. She cried ALL the time as a newborn. We’d only have about 10-20 minutes of contentment after each feeding and then it would be screaming again. I finally gave up dairy when she was about 4 weeks old and our lives were changed completely. She was a different baby after that. I actually had quite a bit of mommy guilt that I didn’t give it up sooner…but I had to forgive myself. She pretty much grew out of it (she’s 13 months old now and eats cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt, etc with no problems), but the switch to cows milk has not been going well at all. I guess the fats are different, and so she may actually be lactose intolerant. Looks like we might be going to goat’s milk!
Colleen, I totally hear you on that one!!!
Sara, I felt really guilty too! I felt like I should have known, and that because I had to have my vanilla latte’s every morning I was causing him pain. Good luck with the milk. Luckily these days there is a plethora of milk-types available at most stores!
so horrible!!! my niece also had HORRIBLE dairy allergy in the beginning – she wasn’t just “colicky”, she had horrible rashes incl on her tushy
And it was all milk proteins. She had to have a super duper special formula (that ins actually paid for!). She grew out of the dairy allergy, although now she makes up for it by having a horrific nut allergy lol
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