More hurdles in the road

The past 7 weeks have been such a challenge for me. I knew life would be hard for the first few months after Mason was born but I never realized just how hard they would be. I never imagined that feeding my child would be even more of a challenge the 2nd time around. I had these grand thoughts that I would easily breastfeed after all the struggles I had with Aubrey, but that has been so far from the truth. It has been nothing but stress and heartache to feed Mason and it has really worn me down. The lost weight, poor latch, thrush and oversupply issues overtook the joy I had in the first few weeks of Mason's life. I was constantly stressed over feeding him. I thought I would be at peace once the thrush healed and I accepted the fact I would have to exclusively pump again.

But, there has been the nagging issues of the state of Mason's bowel movements. They have been consistently bright green, full of mucous and the nail in the coffin was the appearance of blood. It was not consistent at first so I tried to hold off on calling the doctor. I read that oversupply can cause it so I hoped once I had that under control things would improve. I gave him a mix of formula and milk for a few days, which improved his bowel movements, but made his face break out like crazy. I finally had to admit that I knew there was something else going on and faced the reality that he had an allergy to something that I was eating, most likely dairy. Todd had a similar allergy as a baby and I knew the chances of Mason having it were pretty high.

For a few days I strongly considered throwing in the towel on pumping and just going to formula, but the hypoallergenic formula is sooo expensive and I knew it wasn't fair to give up for Mason when I made the sacrifice with Aubrey for so long. So I made the decision to go dairy-free myself and hoped for the best. It has been such a struggle for me because it is so limiting to my diet. While I am not a huge milk/cheese consumer, dairy is in so much of the things I love so finding things for me to eat has been a challenge. But, I knew I had to make this work so I took on the challenge and found out what I could eat and accepted it as my new way of life for now.

After 5 days of no dairy, Mason had 2 more bowel movements with blood specks in them so I called the doctor and took him in. She agreed it could be a dairy allergy and encouraged me to give it some time and monitor for more blood. The good news of the visit was he is continuing to grow well and weighed 9 lbs, 5 oz.

Finally after 7 days of no dairy, we started to see some improvements in the color and texture of his bowel movements. It takes 10-14 days for dairy proteins to leave my system and then 10-14 more days to leave Mason's so I am hoping things will continue to get better over the next week. I am glad that I am still able to feed him breast milk and even though it is a challenge for me, I know I am giving him the best I can. I hope we are able to stop with just the dairy elimination and not have to move towards eliminating soy because that will be even more restrictive as far as my diet. Todd was able to tolerate soy so I am hoping Mason is able to as well. This wait and see game is tough for me, but I am trying to take it one day at a time and hope for the best.