Image by Danny McL via FlickrWhat would you not do for your kids...that's the question right? Three months ago I gave up dairy to help with Liv's tummy issues. I was resigned to no more cheese, milk, yogurt, milk chocolate, ice cream, you name it, for the duration of my nursing her. And then all the symptoms came creeping back.Screaming fits. Arching. Doubling over. A fussy, unhappy baby all day long! Then came the lack of sleep, and now we're on to no sleep so I broke down, called my pediatrician with my special, VIP, have my own parking space I pay so many co-pays, dedicated number (just kidding, but I really should have one) and heard exactly what I expected. No fever, no rash, equals we can see her but it doesn't sound like there is anything wrong illness wise.
Now I love my pedi and her team of nurses so the snarky...wanna come watch the show tonight, it's an all=nighter, reply stayed in my head. And we started talking alternative ways to address this. We ended up on dropping known allergens and seeing if it made a difference. See the worst part about food allergies/intolerance is the best way to diagnose is through an elimination diet which means there are no instant answers or results. So the plan was to drop dairy and soy, give it ten days, then if needed drop Egg, Nuts and Peanuts (yeah I know but they seperated them too...I would have assumed Peanuts fell into nuts), give it ten days and then if needed drop corn and gluten.
So instead of the next month of trial and error today marks day one of my allergen elimination diet. I'm going to toss them all for the next ten days and if we see massive improvement I'll start adding them back slowly. We'll also do a round of blood testing to confirm for her records.
So the sad, sad story is that heading into the Holiday season with it's food, fun, and desserts, I'm heading into it able to eat anything made with no dairy, soy, eggs, nuts, peanuts, wheat or corn. Sounds like a lot of fresh food to me...sorry Stovetop!
