Dairy free livin'

But can you even call it living when one isn't allowed to eat chocolate, cheese, or ice cream? Hard to tell with a one-year-old.

To back track a bit, since we started Joshua on whole milk and yogurts, and other "big people" foods, he has had a couple hive flare-ups. It seems to be worst when dairy-to-skin contact happens, which is odd. Especially since he's been on a milk based formula (Gerber Good Start- Protect Plus) since he went off the hypoallergenic (expensive) stuff when he had the real bad reaction at around 4 months old. But, every time we give him yogurt, or mix his oatmeal with milk, wherever the milk touches his skin around his mouth he gets little red hive-like bumps. And yesterday, he dribbled milk all down the front of himself and had a pretty bad hive flare up where it was on his chest. That was the first time it has seemed to bother him though. He was pulling on his hair, and arching his back, and screaming. Poor thing. Other than that time, he just keeps going about his day, and the spots go away quickly on their own, so we thought it was a matter of him just adjusting to the new thing. (What do we know, right?)

I decided today was time to call his pediatrician and talk to one of the nurses and see what she thought. I was also unsure how much dairy he was supposed to be getting in the first place since this whole no-mo-formula-or-bottles-or-purees thing is new to me. I called a talked to a super nice and patient nurse, and explained what's been going on to see what she recommended. When we went in for Joshua's one-year checkup, the doctor mentioned that depending how milk wait we may end up back on formula, or soy milk for awhile. The nurse seemed more concerned that I thought she would be, apparently hives, even just little ones that go away quick, are not good. So she took notes and had to go ask the doctor what to do and call me back. So that made me nervous. 

Finally, a couple hours later, she called back and said to make the switch to a dairy-free diet for Joshua. Soy milk and tofu it is for him! And not only does he need to drink soy milk, he needs to drink a larger amount of it because they want us to completely eliminate trace dairy from his diet too... which means, nothing that has ingredients like, whey, casein, milk, butter, cheese...etc... the list goes on forever. (I learned all this while I was dairy free for a bit still trying to breast feed)

The good news is, they don't think this is a "true" allergy. It is fairly common in younger kids to have an intolerance to the proteins in cows milk, and their little bodies have trouble breaking it down to digest causing an allergic type reaction. Something like that anyways. So we are trying out this dairy free bit until he goes in for his 15 month check-up and we will re-evaluate then what we should do.

I hope for his sake, he out grows this, and quickly! Now I REALLY need to go grocery shopping, which I have been putting off forever.