Colic and Dairy

After my last post in which I declared victory in the Great Sleeping War of 2012 my baby promptly pulled the rug out from under me once again.

Belly sleeping worked for exactly 2 days...2 days people!  For 2 days I felt like an awesome mother.

And then everything went from bad to worse.

I've been in hell...and thus not blogging.

When you're a new mom hell is a 5 letter word known as COLIC.

If you've never had a baby with colic you will not understand...if you have...you have my sympathy.

Baby Jett went from having a 2 hour fussy period in the evenings around 6 weeks to BEING FUSSY ANYTIME HE WAS AWAKE at 8 weeks.  We could sometimes get some smiles out of him in the first hour that he was awake in the morning but then it was FUSSY, SCREAMY, WHINY, MISERABLE BABY all damn day.  Nothing could soothe him.

He was also having a lot of trouble falling asleep and staying asleep during the day so I could hardly get a break from the crying.

He was miserable.  I was miserable.

I felt like I was losing my shit.  Rapidly falling into depression.

I would cry at the drop of a hat about anything at any time.  I didn't want to be around my baby and spent most of my time crying right alongside him.

For clarification at no point did I want to hurt my baby or myself but I REALLY wanted to give my baby to someone and have them bring him back to me when he was 6 months old and out of whatever fussy period he seemed to be stuck in.

I didn't care if I was going to one day look back on his newborn days and be sad that I missed them, he was making me hate my life.  Especially after fighting so hard for this I spent a lot of time trying to figure out WHY we fought so hard for this because in that moment...it wasn't worth it.  There was no joy, only tears.

It was bad, I was in a really bad place mentally.

And then the straw that broke my back.  My husband's travel schedule had him gone for 3 days one week and 4 days the next.  

I couldn't do this on my own...I wasn't going to make it.

Something had to change.

So I flew home for 2 weeks.  Grandma, Grandpa, Aunts, Cousins, lots of hands to hold my fussy baby and give me a break.

AND at the urging of my midwife and pediatrician we decided to cut out dairy and see if baby's demeanor changed because Baby also had green foamy poop, spitup ALL THE TIME and burping and spitting up seemed to hurt him.

The green foamy poops are also a sign of foremilk/hindmilk imbalance and when you have an oversupply like I do, it's common for baby to get too much foremilk.

Dairy allergies are actually quite UNCOMMON in babies so everyone was skeptical, myself included, but we all needed to eliminate the possibility of a dairy allergy so that it wasn't looming in the back of everyone's minds and we could focus on the milk issue and soothing baby in other ways.

But wouldn't you know it, 2 weeks on the nose from when I eliminated ALL dairy from my diet his poop changed, from green and foamy back to yellow and seedy.

And then 2 days later, 16 days after my diet change, MY BABY DID A COMPLETE 180.

I have a brand new baby.

He started smiling ALL THE TIME when he's awake.  He started laughing.  You can SET HIM DOWN without him screaming.  He hardly ever burps.  His spitup now comes in tiny amounts and doesn't appear to hurt him on the way up.  AND HE SLEEPS BETTER.

2% chance of a dairy allergy and my baby is one of them.  But holy hell I'll take the no dairy for me over that fussy screamy miserable little thing I called my son a few weeks ago.  I feel awful that my screamy baby was screaming because his belly hurt all the time from what I was eating.

He still has that evening fussy time when he's really hard to get down, but it's different.  He's not screaming at us until he falls asleep, now he still won't go to sleep but instead stays up smiling at us trying to convince us it's not bedtime.

So happy and no one is holding him!!!

Hangin with the cuz in Oregon.

I'm happy with the change in my baby and thus will continue to be dairy free as long as I need to, but do you guys realize how many things have dairy in them?  It's actually quite a challenge to eliminate ALL dairy from your diet.  Take a look at this crazy list of ingredients that are all other names for dairy:

source

Now go look in your cupboard at the ingredient list of anything that comes in a box, jar or package.  EVERYTHING seems to have a dairy ingredient because oddly enough it's a preservative.

And eating out?  Nightmare trying to find dishes with no dairy!  I've taken to telling waiters I have a dairy allergy so they go check with the chef.  It's ridiculous!

The only plus I can find...besides the happy baby of course...is that the things I can eat I can eat as much as I want because I am losing weight like there's no tomorrow.  Including pasta which has no dairy!  I am down about 5 lbs now from my PRE-pregnancy weight and about as small as I ever remember being.

We're talking high school weight here folks.  Lactation plus dairy-free equals one skinny bitch!

As nice as it is to quickly get my body back and be able to fit into all of my clothes, we're rapidly heading in the other direction in which all of my clothes are going to be too big.  I have to get a handle on the weight loss before it affects my milk supply!  I would love to be eating cupcakes and eclairs and other delicious pastries, because for some reason that's what I'm craving, but alas...those are dairy.

So, now that we've solved the fussy baby problem and I can set him down for short periods of time during the day we're on to trying to get baby to sleep somewhere besides in my arms at which point I might be able to really start blogging again...and baking dairy free desserts to soothe my new sweet tooth...wish me luck!