Milk and Soy Allergies

     We recently discovered Savanna has a milk and/or soy allergy (she's too young to conclusively test) While statistics say only a small percentage of babies have milk protein allergies, we've come across tons of friends and colleagues dealing with the same issue. A milk protein allergy is when a baby's immune system thinks the milk protein is a foreign body and should be fought off. This results in an allergic reaction which results in stomach discomfort which causes fussiness! 

     We felt so blessed with what a happy and easy baby Savanna was over the first few weeks. She slept through the night almost from the day we brought her home and regularly snoozed for 7-9 hours a night. Boy were we spoiled! It was easy to figure out something was up when her demeanor changed around 5 weeks old..Thats when the doctor thinks the allergy began to show itself. She stopped taking her long afternoon nap, became much more erratic at night, and was very fussy, especially while eating. Our New Year's Eve guests can attest to that! All of the books say 6-8 weeks is a supper fussy time for infants so we hoped she might grow out of it, but we checked in with our doctor after realizing it was impacting her eating. As mentioned earlier, the poop test cannot conclusively say what allergy babies have so its a process of elimination to rule things out. They started by having me eliminate soy and dairy, the two most common allergies, from my diet. If that hadn't solved the problem, they would have then tried taking out peanuts and wheat. As tough as it is NOT eating dairy and soy (soy is in EVERYTHING!), we were blessed to find the cause of her angst. Unfortunately it takes a full 2 weeks to see results, as it takes that long to get out of Mom's system and then Baby.

     It has definitely been a challenge, but It is worth it to see that my little girl is not in pain anymore.  The milk was not that hard (although giving up chocolate was after all the cookies I consumed at the end of my pregnancy:) ). What has been super challenging has been the soy.  Who knew soy is in EVERYTHING!  When you have a moment just open your cabinets and look at the ingredients it is crazy - most of the items in my cabinets I could not eat anymore.  Soy is in everything because it is an emulsifier (read here (http://www.food-info.net/uk/qa/qa-fi63.htm) and here (http://www.foodadditivesworld.com/emulsifiers.html) for explanations on emulsifiers).  It is also usually in vegetable oil blends since it is inexpensive.  So it is hard to eat a lot of commercially based products and I have been avoiding going out to eat.  The benefit of this is it is a really healthy diet and I eat a lot of fruit, vegetables and chicken.  As another option you can switch to a hypoallergenic formula which breaks down the proteins for the babies, but Savanna did NOT like them!  I don't blame her, just the smell is nasty.  I read that they are more bitter than regular formulas because of the broken down proteins.  So for now, it is a milk and soy free diet for me (which is totally worth it to make her happy)!  I will start sharing some of the fun milk and soy free recipes (especially for those other moms who have milk and soy allergies),  I have been cooking and baking but for today just a few pictures of my little Savanna :)