Milk, does it do a body good?

January 23-29, 2012

This week was week one for me of no dairy. We aren't just talking no lactose... we're talking, no eating it if the food as any artificial butter flavoring, whey protein in any form, etc. That means even no lactose-free products. I've had a suspicion that Caleb has problems with dairy but kept hoping his digestive tract would handle it better by three or four months old.

Finally, after reading my cousin Brynn's blog, I decided I should give it a try... Brynn, you may be wondering what in your blog inspired me... She said that she loved her daughter more than chocolate. I thought, "that's cute but any mom loves their child more than chocolate." Then the thought came, "Do I love my son more than chocolate, butter, ice cream, and milk?" I guess I do, because I am giving it up for the time being. Not going to lie though, it is hard! Much harder than I thought.

The good news: It is helping. Caleb does not wake up screaming in pain. He no longer has diarrhea (apparently he's had it for at least the last two months and I just thought it was normal... I now know what "normal" infant poop looks like).

The bad news: Because it's helping, no more dairy for Mom. I'll slowly try re-introducing different things into my diet after a week or two to see how he handles them.

On a different "milk" note: due to breastfeeding Caleb, milk is doing my body good! I keep losing my pregnancy weight without even trying. But because I haven't been exercising like I would like to (and couldn't exercise during my pregnancy) I have also lost a lot of muscle, and as a result, my pants are all getting to be too small. There could be worse problems. I didn't not believe the people who told me that pregnancy weight would melt off... 40 lbs later, I'm a believer.

Thanks to being dairy-free, Caleb has been sleeping better! For nap-time we read him a book and then let him talk to himself and fuss for 10-15 minutes and he almost always falls asleep. He's taking 2-3 naps a day now! I love this! This gives me close to an hour (three times a day) to do things that I want to do without holding him: shower, take a nap, clean, blog, start making dinner.

At night, he wakes up two-three times to eat (between 7 pm and 7 am) and a couple of other times just crying. This is great! I've heard it takes up to two weeks to get the cow proteins out of my system (for me to be clean) so hopefully he'll stop the other wake-ups soon.

Caleb found his feet this week and loves to grab them, stare at them and play with them. He pulls on his socks and holds onto his pants.

Caleb is still easily distracted, especially while eating. He will stop eating every couple of minutes to talk to the picture of Jesus in his room or arch his back to see the picture of Cat in the Hat on the wall or just to stare over at his crib. The worst is when Dad walks into the room while he's eating... if he was in the room when Caleb started eating, there's no problem. But when Dad walks in after work and Caleb hears him, he won't stop smiling and staring at Dad! (I can't complain about that one though, it's adorable!)

Caleb now turns into our kisses. When we go to give him a kiss on the cheek or on the nose, he turns his open mouth right at us and we get a slobbery, open mouth kiss.

He has enough hair to mess up! It's blonde so it doesn't show up in a lot of the pictures.

When we hold Caleb on our lap standing up, he now takes steps backwards.

Allen got on our roof this week to clean out our gutters before the big storm came in... they had never been cleaned out before and had enough dirt in them for weeds to be growing! That mean that they were not functioning as gutters should.

Caleb was scared of my blow dryer. I got my first (ever) blow dryer for Christmas this year and this is the first time Caleb has been in the bathroom when I used it. He did not like it! So, to keep him happy, I held him while blow drying my hair... I felt so talented that I took a picture of it!

On Saturday my car inexplicably died. No previous problems or symptoms (not sure what the car word for symptoms is) and then we were driving and Allen asked if I could smell the antifreeze. I said that all I could smell was the maple syrup at McDonald's we were driving past. After running a couple of errands, we were sitting at Arby's (don't eat there if you want to go dairy-free, everything has dairy in it except the soft drinks) and watched a puddle of antifreeze grow under the car.

We made it home with an overheating car and watched the rest of the antifreeze drip onto our driveway with no apparent place for it to be leaking from. A quick google search answered our questions... 2006-2009 Honda Civics have a defect: the engine block will crack and your car will be toast. You will be unable to drive it to the car shop and will have to have it towed. It was not recalled but they extended the warranty, so hopefully we'll have ol' blue back in a few days with a new engine, paid for by Honda.

We had some friends over for dinner on Sunday and Allen got a picture of Caleb and their daughter. I love how fascinated kids are with babies... even when they are still babies themselves!

kj