how did you put dairy/soy/etc back into YOUR diet??

[huntersmummyinoz]

hiya,
have just weaned ds2. (very much      at finishing but also  for my diet)

he is almost 8mths old. has various intolerances so i have been dairy free from 5weeks, soy free from 7 weeks, wheat/gluten free from 9 weeks, and also egg/nut/seafood free from around 12 weeks.

wondering how you put these foods back into your diet? i'm assuming since i have been off various things for sooooo long that it's not a good idea to just put them all back at once...

thanks for sharing,
kirry

ps. DH bless him went out to the bakery this morning and i had warm fresh crusty white bread with vegemite for breaky and again for lunch. OMG bread has never tasted sooooo good! definitely have a new appreciation of food after doing this for my little guy.

[EloysH]

congrats Kirry, wonderful news about food coming back into your life!  OMG that bit of bread must have been so Yummy!!!!!     If anything, its a wonderful gift to yourself that you appreciate food so much now  

I would start with the lesser dairy then work through over a few weeks to the major dairy.  Personally I used to suffer alot of painful wind, and now its gone, I am thinking that dairy was the culprit, so dairy would be a "go slow"

  Personally for the other I would just go straight back on, maybe not over do the wheat all at once so you don't get too bloated or anything.


If you have any inkling that you may have food intolerances you could introduce groups one by one just to see  

[huntersmummyinoz]

i've had my third vegemite sandwich for the day already

i'm actually wondering if i have soy intolerance as i reacted when i did the challenge (bloating, cramps, etc) so will defo do that one separately.

[Edesanja]

Yay Kirry!

I introduced dairy like Eloise said. I just put eggs and peanuts straight back in because they were just precautionary (though the way DD dislikes eggs now at 30months (only put into her diet at 24months, perhaps there is intolerance there). Not just digging into a huge bowl of ice cream (my favourite food!) was the hardest thing in the world, but I got it soon enough anyway! YUM!

I found it quite hard to switch my thinking. After so long df it felt like *I* was the one that was dairy intolerant. I know I'll find that hard again this time.

Just because I'm curious (and really struggling with making the decision myself) why have you decided to wean?

[Edesanja]

Hey Kirry, how's it going? What are you enjoying most??!!!

[huntersmummyinoz]

thanks for your responses elo and jenny.

i just want to cry

i have bloody reacted to something i added back wheat/gluten, nuts, egg, and some hidden dairy and 3 days later bloated, cramps. i was in denial for another day and still ate it and then broke out in a rash. WTF!

so i am now back on the old boring diet for at least a week and will have to introduce one at a time and slowly.

i am ok about not bfing but diet stuff kind of helped me get over the grieving of stopping bf IYKWIM but now not only am i not bf, i cant eat anything exciting anyway.

jenny, reasons for stopping bf - originally i planned to make it to 6mths (mainly cos i never had a good bf relationship with ds1 so didnt even think i would make it to 6mths TBH). so making it to 8mths was pretty huge for me anyway, i kept stalling and held onto two feeds for the last month before finally deciding i was ready to stop. a big decider early on was he never used to vomit after neocate but always did a lot after bf, it did ease a little after some more dietary changes (cut lots of high salicylates and only ate occasionally). also when he started on solids and i was making three different lunches, i just thought it was crazy and decided i would start weaning the next week. i also wanted him on neocate so i could really baseline him for introducing the salicylates introductions and know exactly what he was having rather than guessing how much he was getting from me. and the final straw that made me decide to stop altogether (i was toying with the idea of keeping the bedtime feed for a bit longer) was when i made two big mistakes in the last month with my diet accidentally - once had the wrong mayonaisse that had milk solids in it and he reacted, second time i accidentally ate butter rather than my dairy free one, he didnt react but i just couldnt handle the guilt of possible making him sick anymore. i definitely noticed an improvement in how settled he was once i had increased to three bottles a day of neocate.

the actual diet stuff for me, although nice to be able to eat what i want (or so i thought ) didnt really worry me as i'd gotten so used to it. i thought  i would be a little out of control doing the groceries but i think i've found so many substitutes now that i wasnt craving so much. was nice eating real bread tho, and egg soldiers, yummy!

[huntersmummyinoz]

jenny, i know you were thinking of maybe keeping the morning bf. i wonder if you'd have more luck keeping the bedtime one? as that way you are offering a bottle and nothing else for the entire day, and then the bf at bedtime, may mean he is less likely to hold out for bf. good luck with your decision hun

[huntersmummyinoz]

one other reason i gave up to was i was over expressing. i did ds1's bedtime once a week so had to express and also usually expressed twice over the weekend so i could either have some me time or take ds1 out somewhere. once i switched to mixed feeding (morning and bedtime bf) it was great as i didnt have to do it much anymore and was no longer held to certain times to either be back to feed or express

[Edesanja]

Thanks so much Kirry. Having read that, I feel for the first time that someone else feels the same as I do. So sorry to hear that YOU are now having food troubles. That's not what you want after an ED!

Bfing once a day is going ok. He's ok if only 1 out of 4 feeds are bfs. Any more and he starts rejecting the bottle. I want to be still bfing (at least for now) but it does feel a bit ridiculous being on a restricted diet still for only 1 bf a day (I tried adding egg but was still a no-go). At the moment though it's my stale-mate position - I can't give up yet, but it's most of the way to formula feeding. What you said about wanting the baseline is exactly what will push me to 100% neocate feeding.

For me 6 months DOESN'T feel like an achievement. My bfing relationship with DD was awful until 4 months and ok till 7 months when I had to stop cos we were travelling overseas. It was going well enough for me to continue if we hadn't have been going. I was soooo disappointed to have to stop then, but it was easier since I felt the decision was really out of my hands (you know how it's easier to not feel guitly about something when you feel like you weren't in control of the decision). I haven't even made it to 7 months yet, plus the decision is all on my shoulders this time. I am pro-breastfeeding - I never intended to formula feed, yet here I am for the 2nd time...

Also what you

the actual diet stuff for me, although nice to be able to eat what i want (or so i thought Roll Eyes ) didnt really worry me as i'd gotten so used to it. i thought  i would be a little out of control doing the groceries but i think i've found so many substitutes now that i wasnt craving so much.

Snap. Everybody else in my life keeps going on about how good it will be to eat what I want. IIIIIIIII DDDOOONNNNN'TTTTTTT CCCCAAAAARRRRRREEEEEEEEE!!!!!! For the most part it's not a bother to me. I could keep doing it for a heck of a lot longer if it was just a matter of not eating stuff. - It's the second guessing the effects on J that is the hard part. If only doing what I've been doing gave me a happy baby..... (which was the case with DD - I found the baseline with her which meant that I would have been able to continue).

DH is so busy at the moment that we just don't have time to talk. Tonight is the night though when we're going to try and come up with a plan - continue with what I'm doing or give it up

[EloysH]

hugs Kirry for the reaction.  Hopefully its just a case of too much too soon!  Overload perhaps.  Out of interest, I used to get alot fo bloating and painful cramps and wind before this diet.  On this diet I have had only one case.  I have no idea what the problem food is but I suspect dairy. So there has been benefits for me, (not just all for Kai  )  and of course my skin has been clear.  

Are you going to run it past the dietician?  Rash?  How could you get a rash when you never used to get them?  Does that mean being off it made you hypersensitive?  I am very curious as to what the dietician would say.

Kirry, I think the expressing alone would be enough for me to want to stop bf'ing.  I still refuse to express, I find it too hard for some reason - IKYKWIM.  its just asking one thing too many - on top of everything else.  

Girls I totally understand about finding the baseline, if you can't reach baseline whilst breast feed and  LO is on solids, then there's absolutely no point of going through it all.  The baseline is a must and I admit the 8 weeks of struggle (being on the full lown diet) + the previous months of my own elimination diet before that was sheer hard work and tearing hair out. I think if I had started bottle feeding, I would have seen it differently.    

Jenny: Good luck with coming up with a plan.  

 Can you share how you went with the egg?  What happened and how many eggs did you eat and for how long?

[Edesanja]

The plan.... it's not a very good one and I'm not really happy with it. The question is though can I be happy with any plan and the answer is no, probably not.

DH thinks we should just work with the baseline of what we've got now and take steps backwards if it gets worse. This is all with the view that he's got an immature gut that he just needs to grow out of. He thinks we could do trials continually but in the end we will have caused ourselves a lot of work and trouble when one day he's just grown out of it anyway (and after our experience with DD when she was on an extremely limited diet for a long time because of what we thought were food issues, but weren't - I see why he thinks this).

But I'm worried that he is still reacting to something and don't want to be causing him more pain than is necessary. So then I think I should at least give up bfing and then we can see where we are at.  I JUST CAN'T DO IT YET!

DH's little sister is getting married next weekend. We've decided to make it a trial  and I will eat at the wedding. I think we should feed him Neocate for a couple of days instead of bfing in the AM and see if there's any improvement. DH thinks I should use it as an opportunity to see if J can tolerate dairy, soy, eggs in my milk. I think that's a step too far at this stage. I have a feeling that I won't be bfing after next weekend.

But then, what happens if his tummy still isn't better after I stop bfing? He's only eating 5 foods now (pears, potato, pumpkin, kumara, apples). I can't go back to feeding him NOTHING in order to get a baseline.

Eloise, with eggs - I ate them for 2 days and then gave up. The first day I had 2 cooked in meatloaf and the second day I had 1 in pancakes. His tummy was quite a lot worse both days (but then his tummy was really bad yesterday and I didn't eat eggs - see I hate the guessing game and no baseline!). BUT both days I had them later in the day. Maybe, considering I bf in the AM I would have got different results if I'd eaten them in the AM. Ahhhh!!! It drives me crazy!

[huntersmummyinoz]

elo, seeing dietician on wed so will def be bringing it up, i can only assume i have an intolerance of some kind (i'm suspecting wheat...) and i had built quite a high threshold that i now have to re-establish interestingly, i've realised i havent had asthma once since kingston was born. whether that is from diet or bfing i'm not sure as i do remember my asthma was much better when bfing hunter too. tho you'd think i would be getting that back as a symptom too, i dont know.

jenny, hugs hun, it's not an easy decision to make. too many pros and cons. truly feel for you, stopping bfing was the right decision for us, it's been a week now but i still miss it terribly, kingston didnt even bat an eyelid when i gave him a bottle at bedtime instead . thinking of you