The (Literal) Taste of Freedom

I'm back again to update about the food sensitivity/allergic colitis situation. I don't want to leave the story unfinished just in case another mom searching the internet and stumbling on this blog is looking for some info about this topic.

Overall, things are going great. Lovey is thriving and we have seen no new reactions in the past few months - except to infant Tylenol and Motrin, which we gave him several times to help him with his teething (poor thing!)

The past week and a half have been a bit of an experiment, and I have allowed myself to eat any foods that I wanted, including dairy and soy. The main reason for doing this was to prepare for an IgG allergy test (see here for the U.S. version). The test is a costly but worthwhile method of determining if I have any food sensitivities that are creating reactions in Lovey. This temporary eat-everything-I-want diet (including 2 Dairy Queen blizzards, an ice cream cone, pizza, Indian food, cheesy dips, soy milk) did indeed cause some symptoms in Lovey, but they were much milder than we expected (some mucous in his diapers and a bit of rash on his back and face) but no diaper rash, thank goodness! I firmly believe that the reactions were lessened by my use of digestive enzymes with each meal. I am also taking flax, fish oil, probiotics, a prenatal vitamin, vitamin D, and a high-potency B complex. Oh, and iron (ask me about our outrageous grocery/health food store bills!) We continue to give Lovey probiotics and vitamin D daily, and flax several times a week.

So now we wait for 2-3 weeks until we receive the results of the test. Until then, I am back to no dairy but I think I will keep soy (in small amounts) in my diet for the next week to see what happens. Unfortunately, Lovey is cutting molars and dealing with some kind of viral flu-ey type thing and not sleeping well at all, so I'd like to know how I'm supposed to track symptoms when so many things are happening at once! I really think that figuring out "what causes what", particularly when you throw the food sensitivities in the mix, is probably one of the most challenging parts of being a parent!