Sunday, May 30, 2010

Diagnosing Child #1

I first realized that something was wrong with my son's diet when he was about 2 weeks old and was up at night wheezing. He didn't seem to be sick, but thinking maybe a cold was coming on, I went to the store in the middle of the night to get a humidifier. It didn't help at all. His next symptom was projectile vomiting. At this point he was mostly breastfed with a little supplementing of regular milk-based formula. I read in the book What To Expect The First Year that projectile vomiting was often a sign of a milk allergy. Unfortunately I cannot remember many of the details of the situation because I was so sleep deprived, but I know that shortly after reading this particular book I changed my diet to be rid of all milk sources (but I was still able to have traces of milk just fine). My son improved dramatically. His vomiting stopped. His "sick" symptoms went away. At his 2 month well baby visit, his doctor diagnosed him with a type of milk allergy (milk protein intolerance). I supplemented with soy formula. It took me a few months to get used to eating the different diet. Once I made a spaghetti mix packet and didn't read the label carefully to see that there was dried milk or some other milk product in it. He vomited for the next 24 hours after he ate my breast milk that was contaminated with the dairy. It usually took 4 hours for the dairy to enter my breast milk supply, and then another 24 hours for it to get out. Whenever I ate something on accident that had dairy I would have to pump the next 24 hours while my son had soy formula in a bottle. His growth was minimal, but he was healthy until age six months when he started to get sick frequently.

1 comment:

  1. jenny, if you put up a resource section you can add the website of my doctor below. he is an expert in food allergies and very interested in helping his patients and explaining what is going on with them.

    http://www.doctorloria.com/

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