Adventures in Baby Feeding

Remember back before Olivia was born, when I had time to blog occasionally, and complained on my wife's behalf about all the things she had to leave out of her diet? We looked forward to the days of having an outside baby so she could go back to eating whatever she wanted.

Not so much.

Some babies don't deal well with certain foods, even when those foods are getting processed through mom and delivered as breast milk. Dairy is a big offender, but occasionally babies can't tolerate soy, wheat, eggs, and so forth, which means you have the potential as a mom who is attempting to breastfeed to have a MORE restrictive diet with an outside baby than you did when you were pregnant. This is not exactly the same as having an allergy to the offending food product. As I understand it, babies' digestive systems just can't always process proteins associated with those foods, and ideally they will begin processing them correctly as their systems' mature.

Ideally. In the meantime, the inability to process these proteins can cause inflammation in babies' intestines, which manifests as stomach pain and incredible fussiness. Personally, I think there's a good chance that a lot of you whose parents described you as "colic babies" probably had issues with something you were eating. But what do I know? I'm a lawyer, not a nutritionist.

Olivia has an intolerance for dairy protein. So we went from no soft cheese in pregnancy to no cheese, yogurt, milk, ice cream, cream based soups, most sauces at Olive Garden, and a surprising number of bread products. But dairy hasn't been the end of the story. We are currently experimenting with eliminating soy from Wife's diet, and that appears to have taken care of most of the rest of Olivia's digestive issues. Do you have any idea how many things have soy in them? Between the two intolerances we are seriously considering the cro-magnon diet where you eat nothing but unprocessed meat and produce.

The only other realistic option is going formula. There's nothing wrong with formula in my opinion except for the ludicrous expense. Especially if you have to find a formula that is neither dairy nor soy based. So, ladies, if you are expecting and looking forward to eating everything you've missed out on for the last few months.... go have some ice cream. It might be the last you have for a long time.