4.16.2012

ashley non-dairy

There was a reason I wrote up that goofy story about Courtney Non-dairy. Not a great reason, mind you, but a reason.

You see, I have this great baby who I'm nursing. And said great baby seems to have inherited his mama's sensitive digestive tract. So far I've identified in him a decided intolerance for soy, peanuts, and tree nuts (like almonds and walnuts). How do you know your baby's intolerant to something? Believe me, you'll know. Words like "green" and "stinky" and "slime" describe the diapers you find.

Generally speaking, this is no big deal to me because I don't eat a whole lot of soy or tree nuts, and I only have the occasional pb&j or Reese's cup. And the peanut intolerance might be a good thing, because peanuts and peas are related and I kind of hate peas. It'd be a great excuse to avoid them in situations where I might otherwise feel compelled to choke them down.

UNFORTUNATELY, it looks like he doesn't just have some (normal) intolerances.

I noticed a patch of dry skin on his side that wouldn't go away with lotions. It got a little bigger over time, but not too much. And then last week it kind of exploded and spread all over his chest and tummy, with little patches on one calf, too. I suspected eczema. Normal, right? Loads of babies get eczema.

Well, because I am a dirty hippie crunchy, holistic type who thinks that frequently, a lot of "normal" issues are a result of things we ingest and expose ourselves to, I'm aware that a dairy allergy often manifests as eczema.

The pediatrician confirmed my suspicion that it's eczema, and pretty much immediately I stopped eating dairy. I've read on message boards that moms who suspect their nursing babies have a dairy allergy will see the eczema clear up 75-90% in the first two or three days. I figured that if it really is a dairy allergy, that I'd know pretty fast.

Sure enough, it's been a little over a full day since going dairy-free, and his eczema seems to be about 50% better. I'm going to give it about a week to see what happens, but I have a feeling I'll be giving up cheese and butter for the next while. Fake cheese is out because it's made from soy (and the fake cheese made from rice still has milk and whey protein in it) and nut milks are out, too, so I'm hoping that he didn't also inherit Brian's coconut intolerance. And if he did, I guess I'll be doing the rice milk thing for a while.

So I guess instead of cake and ice cream for my birthday, I'll be having some lemon ice and maybe I'll cheat and make some cookies. The eczema spread fairly slowly and didn't seem to bother him at all, so maybe his allergy isn't so strong that I can't cheat now and then.

In the meantime, I may tinker around with some DIY rice milk, because the store-bought stuff is sooooo expensive. It seems easy enough - assuming my blender can handle it. And if it works out, I think I can bake with it, make ice cream with it, and maybe add it to soups.

So yeah...if you have any leads on allergen-free cheese, let me know! Either that, or maybe I'll try the rice stuff and hope that the whey proteins are in such small amounts that they won't bug him.

1 comment:

  1. You'll be making, ahem, RICE cream. Ha.

    You're not having any OJ, right? Because as you may or may not recall, Brian and I both had outbreaks of eczema from mom drinking OJ and I still avoid it because it still gives me eczema.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you so much for taking a moment to leave a comment. I love hearing from you!

Analytics