Bye-bye bottles.

Joshua has been officially weaned off of bottles for about a week now I'd say. And I am pretty sure it was harder on me than him. The first day, he was kind of whiny, like he knew something was off, but not quite sure what. 

We didn't cut them out cold turkey. When the doctor told up to wean him off the formula and bottles and make the big swap to big-boy milk, we started cutting bottles out. He was already down to only getting a bottle at bedtime and one for a snack between breakfast and lunch. Then we cut out the snack bottle, which was no big deal for anyone. Then—came the bed-time bottle. 

Our normal bed-time routine for the last, how-ever-many months. Is this. Around 7pm we start getting ready for bed, every other night joshua gets a bath first, then it's time for a book and a bottle, and some wind-down playing to kill the rest of his energy, then it's off to bed he goes. I loved his bed-time bottle, because as he has gotten older, he has gotten increasingly less likely to sit still when I want him to. Mostly because he would rather be crawling or walking and exploring his world. The bed-time bottle was one of the couple times of day where he would cuddle up with me and just sit still.

I miss our cuddle bottle time! But now, he REALLY likes book. Which is great, and usually he really likes only one or two books at a time, which means we re-read the same book about 4,654,347,432 times a day. Now our bed-time bottle has been replaced with a bed-time sippy full of soy milk and a book. It's not exactly the same, because sometimes he just wants to do it himself and sit on the floor. (sad face). But most nights now he will cuddle with me. It's a bit bitter-sweet to have such an independent little man. Most of the time it's great, but not when mama needs cuddle time! 

On a side note. We have discovered that Joshua likes his soy milk just fine. But he will only drink it out of one particular sippy cup. Well, that is not entirely true I guess, he will drink it out of other's but he drinks much more eagerly, and will drink the full amount we give him out of the certain one. The one he likes it in, has a softer nipple than the others, and also handles, maybe it reminds him of having a bottle? Either way, I am just glad he is taking the soy milk now. I am not nearly as stressed about him getting the proper amount of calories or calcium now. I also discovered this awesome yogurt that is dairy-free and made with coconut milk. (pictured below). I found this brand of ice cream when I was on a dairy-free diet for breast feeding, but didn't realize they made yogurt too! Joshua loves it, and so do I! The blueberry is especially yummy.

I recommend you try this, even if not on a dairy-free diet. It's amazing! Especially if you like coconut.

Bye-bye bottles :-( 

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.