I was so angry last night. I was thinking about how unfair it is that I have to cook two meals and use four measuring cups and two spatulas and relearn so many things. I have to train myself to read every ingredient of everything I ingest for the foreseeable future and my husband and kids can just skip along putting whatever the hell they want in their mouths. It isn't fair that I have to do all of this changing and nobody else has to even give it any thought.
I assume this is a common train of thought for everyone who is new to cutting things out of their diets. I remember feeling this way almost three years ago when it came time to cut out casein for my first allergy kid. I remember this feeling of being so overwhelmed and feeling like nothing was safe. I didn't know then that it was only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to food sensitivities and the state of our food. I didn't know then that I would have another allergy baby with a much more complex set of food issues. I didn't know then that I would accidentally become a paleo eating cavegirl.
My fourth daughter is a beautiful perfect 3 month old with some major food issues going on. We aren't 100% sure what she needs to be healthy as this point but we're trying really hard to figure it out. Starting early on we knew that B had some problems. From the first few days we noticed that she was very high strung and never ever stopped moving. It was almost like she was tense in every muscle and just vibrating all the time. As time went on we started to realize that she spent absolutely no time happy. She was just a miserable baby. So I cut out dairy including all hidden sources of casein. This was second nature for me and so easy to do because we already keep most hidden casein out of our home and I'm lactose intolerant so I didn't really miss the dairy so much. So I started living on Clif bars as a nursing mother with a brand new baby and three other children who all have needs. So many NEEDS!
It wasn't until B was about 6 weeks old that we decided there was something else going on. So I cut out soy. Soy proteins are very closely related to milk proteins so many children that have problems with dairy will also have problems with soy. One week later our baby relaxed. It was like she was finally able to take a deep breath and just stop moving. It was like I was finally able to relax too. I don't think I fully realized how tense I had been until the day we were finally able to take that breath. Over the next several weeks we were reminded of how miserable our daughter had been each time I accidentally ingested soy and she had a setback. She would go back to being tense and crabby, having green mucus poops, and severe gas. Each time I poisoned her would mean three days of misery for all of us.
So we knew soy was a major trigger. And we started to learn just how ubiquitous soy is in every single thing we eat in the modern world. We also learned that although the FDA does not consider soybean oil or soy lecithin to be allergens, little Miss B could not handle them. Orange soda was a surprising poison for me. It just never occurred to me that there would be any need to put soybean oil in my favorite soda. Those Clif bars that I was living on because they are dairy free? Made mostly of soy protein. I still want to cry thinking about how I was hurting my poor baby without knowing it.
I know that most people can eat whatever they want while nursing and I know that it is not my fault that I didn't know what was hurting her. But that doesn't stop me from feeling like I should have known somehow. I'm her mother and my breastmilk should be perfect for her. These thoughts are neither helpful nor really true but the feelings are there.
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