Pass the Soy Milk, Please...

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Yesterday when I was changing the baby's diaper I noticed blood in her stool and thought to myself "are you kidding me?".

Both of my older kids had milk allergies as babies and were diagnosed after having blood in their stools. With both of them I eliminated milk from my diet and the blood disappeared. With this baby I kind of figured she would also have a milk allergy and last month after her being super fussy and gassy her doctor and I decided that I should eliminate milk from my diet yet again.

From the week before Christmas until now I have not had any dairy and my little darling still had blood in her stool yesterday. I do have to admit that I have not been super militant about the dairy thing- obviously food that states it has dairy in the ingredients was avoided but I have been eating things that said they were made in a factory that also uses milk in other products and I have also been assuming that the cheese-less subs I have been getting from the pizza place up the street don't have dairy in the bread.

So now it's on- I am going to be downright psychotic about what I eat. Nothing with dairy, nothing made in a factory that processes dairy, nothing with "caramel color" added, nothing with natural or artificial flavors, no deli meats or hot dogs, no food from restaurants and I'm sure there are other things I am forgetting. This pretty much means that any and all processed food is my enemy.

It is sad to think of food as an enemy and to distrust it. Even when I read a food label I am always thinking "is the label telling the truth?" I really do feel for those people who have life long food allergies- mine is just until I wean my daughter from breastfeeding when she is a year old (hopefully she outgrows her allergy like my other kids did) so it is only a minor and temporary annoyance. I cannot imagine having to deal with this my whole life- not being able to eat at family holidays, fearing that my restaurant food was accidentally contaminated, having to carefully read every label.

Starting tomorrow I am going to go back to my crunchy, hippy, Birkenstock wearing ways (I actually do have a very comfy pair of Birkenstock clogs that I love) and will be making as much from possible from scratch for myself and I suppose this means my husband and kids will be jumping on the bandwagon as well. How I will accomplish this I do not know but I need to try my best because my little baby is depending on me to keep her healthy and in turn to also keep myself healthy.

I still reserve the right to drool whenever I get near a Reeses cup, though...