My pediatrician says that I am in an elite group of people that struggle with food intolerances in the breast fed baby. I honestly don’t know how common, or uncommon it is, but I know that trying to figure out this complicated puzzle is not fun and can often lead to feeling frustrated and alone.
I’ve shared before about my struggles with figuring out what was wrong with my second child and his tummy issues, and part of me feels robbed to have to go through it again. I feel robbed of a happy baby. I feel robbed of sleep we could have because of tummy troubles, and I feel robbed of food. Lots of food I can’t eat.
The signs of a food intolerance in your baby can vary. In my babies, it looks like mucousy stool, blood in the stool, frequent night wakings and very frequent diaper changes. It can also include a cranky baby that cries a lot, and seems in a constant state of discomfort. For me, having been through this before, I knew how to eat dairy and soy free. Two of the top foods that your baby could be allergic to through the breastmilk. But, I didn’t count on those two foods not fixing the problem this time around. So, in addition, I’ve cut out chocolate, nuts, eggs, and corn. It’s frustrating to be so limited in what I eat, but even more frustrating to not know what food is causing problems in my baby. But, it is pretty much the only way to figure it all out.
This week has been two weeks where I have not seen traces of blood in my baby’s diaper. So, I decided to start to reintroduce a food I thought was least likely to be causing the problem. The last two days, I ate a sandwich with mayo on it to reintroduce eggs. And, last night, my baby was up every hour and a half. This morning, I saw blood in his stool again.
I will continue to eat eggs this week and see if the trend continues. But, I hate putting my baby through this. However, I hope that it means that now I know that eggs is a food I have to continue to avoid, and maybe I can add something else back into my diet in a couple of weeks. It feels like a game sometimes, or a very difficult puzzle to solve. A puzzle that no mother wants to put together. Mostly for the sake of her baby.
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