Dairy Free!

As most of you know, for the past 10 months, I have had a dairy-free diet because Avery was exhibiting signs of a dairy allergy starting at 2 weeks of age.  It's been an interesting road and for many of those 10 months, I've been looking forward to her first birthday when I would hopefully wean her.  Now that we're approaching that date, I'm feeling so hesitant about losing that part of our day. 

In May, I started feeling like her allergy was diminishing, so I began experimenting by eating some dairy products (mainly cheese and milk in my cereal).  Sure enough, within a day or two, her pimply rash came back, she was really fussy, her diapers were different...so I went off it again.  True to form, about a week or two after I stopped eating it, her symptoms cleared.  About a month after that, I wanted to see where she was at again.  But the girls beat me to it and accidentally gave her cow's milk to drink.  Wow, she was covered in these little pimples all over her face for two weeks.  Not pretty.

Finally, we were able to get in with an allergist to get her tested because I still felt like her allergy was improving.  A few days before her appointment, I told Braden that I felt the doctor was going to tell me she wasn't allergic to dairy..and then what?  Why, then, was she having reactions?

We tested her thru a blood draw and sure enough, the results came back negative.  Because of her history of reactions, they ordered a skin test to follow-up.  We had that this morning.  And, again, the results were negative!  I feel that she has just gotten old enough and outgrown this allergy.  Most babies who show signs of an allergy to dairy in their first year outgrow it by their first birthday.  We've been praying that would be the case with Avery and it looks like it is.

To test her, I had a TON of dairy (at least a ton after being off for 10 months) on Friday and Saturday last week and she had no reaction.  So I was not surprised at the results today.  I'm a little mixed on my emotion about me being able to have dairy, though.  I know Braden is going to be SO excited because it doubles our menu choices and greatly expands where we can go out to eat when we go on dates.  But, after consuming pizza and a frosty last weekend, and then being doubled over in stomach pains because of it, I am not so sure dairy is really all that it's cracked up to be.

I know, I know.  We're the only animal that drinks the milk of another animal.  It's not natural, blah blah blah.  Some people say they got sick less when they went off dairy. I found I was more sleepy, got dizzy MUCH more than usual, had bone aches, muscle cramps, etc. more than ever before.  I'm blaming it on the lack of milk.  But I also know that going off it for a year and then reintroducing it into my diet was not fun.  I guess we'll take baby steps.  But in the meantime, we're having ice cream tonight.