~*~*MSPI Moms Weekly Check-In*~*~
***So sorry this is a day late, ladies! Yesterday was a ridiculously busy day at work.***
Welcome! This is a check-in for moms who are/were on a dairy free and/or soy free diet due to their LO's intolerance. The check-ins will be posted every Monday morning on the Breastfeeding board and XP'd to the Food Allergy board. If you'd like to join the group, just post an intro here and dive in! To check out the archive of our previous check-ins, please see the MSPI Moms Blog (www.mspimoms.blogspot.com).
1. How are you doing? How is your LO doing?
2. Does your LO have any other issues aside from MSPI?
3. Any other burning questions you'd like answered or experiences to share?
Re: ~*~*MSPI Moms Weekly Check-In*~*~ 1/14
1. How are you doing? How is your LO doing? MSPI-wise, just fine. I'm thinking we should try giving him a little soy again soon. It's been a few months. His hives do seem to be calming down a bit with the higher zyrtec dose, but I want to wait until his face has been clear for awhile.
2. Does your LO have any other issues aside from MSPI? DS has had other food intolerances (egg, wheat, coconut, cabbage) that he seems to be out-growing. He's also dermatographic, which the allergist described as chronic hives, but they're not like big welty hives, just small raised red bumps when he gets scratched or on his face when he eats certain foods (mainly seems to be acidic foods now).
3. Any other burning questions you'd like answered or experiences to share? Not today!
2. No other issues that I am aware of. I think he's probably asthmatic but I doubt that could be dx'ed so young.
3. Nope. I'm too frazzled from earlier to think of anything.
@shanbp I totally understand the temptation and frustration. I tell people all the time that if I'd tried to do this diet on my own willpower, rather than because I had to for DS's sake, I would have cheated so many times.
I've learned to be like a detective at restaurants. People just aren't used to thinking of food this way. Once I asked a host if any of the food he'd made had soy in it, and he said, "Nope, the salmon's just marinated in teriyaki sauce..." Umm, yeah, soy is a main ingredient in teriyaki sauce! That's when I realized I had to just start asking, what is this marinated in? How do you prepare it? Is there butter on the grill, or what kind of oil? Etc. etc...
Regarding your last question, I personally have not heard of SPI-only kids and that was not the case with my DS, but I don't know if it's impossible. I do know at least one of our MSPI mamas can give her LO goat cheese but not cow. HTH!
1. How are you doing? How is your LO doing? Okay. I have been dairy and soy free for almost two weeks now. I am seeing blood in her stool, and she is still uncomfortable...but it is looking up.
2. Does your LO have any other issues aside from MSPI? She has reflux, and started meds yesterday.
3. Any other burning questions you'd like answered or experiences to share? Yes! So I went dairy and soy free when DD2 was 6 days old after noticing all of the behavioral symptoms of MSPI...(DD1 had MSPI which wasn't diagnosed until 3 months when her stool had blood in it, but she had colic behavior prior to that) and just now she has blood in her stool. It makes me nervous that potentially she is sensitive or allergic to something else as well? I did call the pedi, and she is having us come in on Thursday.
2. Does your LO have any other issues aside from MSPI? He is allergic to eggs and possibly shellfish. He has had eczema but knock on wood he has only gotten a few bums here and there lately. He hasn't had itreally bad in a long time.
3. Any other burning questions you'd like answered or experiences to share? How long would you do the dairy trial for before trying eggs again?
1. How are you doing? How is your LO doing?
Well, we're hanging in there. I ate Chinese food on Friday partially due to being tired and frustrated, and partially because I hadn't actually tried anything with soy in it since I cut out dairy and was curious to see if I noticed any change in DS. It took a few days, but my baby is back to being completely miserable. It's almost like being back at square one--gassiness, rashy skin, mucusy poop... I feel horrible about it.
2. Does your LO have any other issues aside from MSPI?
Not that I've noticed. For a while we were concerned about torticollis, but that seems to have resolved on its own.
3. Any other burning questions you'd like answered or experiences to share?
I've got nothing, really. I do, however, keep wanting to rant about how hard it is to grocery shop now. It's nothing major, but it's incredibly frustrating how much ingredients vary from one brand to the next, especially when DH is the one doing the bulk of the grocery shopping right now. I love the man to pieces, but I basically have to be on the phone with him the entire time he's at the store, reminding him to check labels on everything.
@camedowncrushing So you're saying the other MSPI symptoms have cleared up (like green, mucousy poop, gassiness), but she still has some blood in her poop? Hmm, well, if it's only been a couple of weeks since you've been dairy/soy free, I wouldn't be worrying about other intolerances or allergies just yet. The symptom cycle during the first few weeks of the diet can be weird, a lot of mamas have reported immediate improvements to some symptoms only to have some return again a few days later. So I wouldn't read too much into it yet. That being said, you could start keeping a food diary to see if the bloody poop seems to be associated with another food in your diet. GL!
@brideinsummer04 That's so exciting that your DS is doing well with the cheese! I also have not been nearly as impressed with dairy products now that I can eat them again. It's so weird! I used to LOVE cheese, and I drank like a gallon of milk a week when I was pg with DS. Now, I don't even buy cheese and I'm still baking with rice milk and making my own almond milk for my cereal. It's probably healthier not to eat so much dairy anyway! Re: the eggs, I think if it's been a week and he's been fine, and you are really wondering about the eggs, I'd go ahead and give him some. I kind of did the same with DS. I didn't re-intro all types of dairy before trying eggs (and he clearly was still intolerant of the eggs when I tried them).
@lovelainie Aww, that sucks about the sad baby. At least now you know for sure. I feel you on the grocery shopping vent. It took us at least twice as long to grocery shop when we first started this diet, and DH still accidentally brings home things I can't eat! But, the shopping does get easier. You'll get to know which brands work for you and your DH will get in the habit of reading labels. Hang in there!
2. We don't even know if he has an intolerance. We're doing this as a precaution after a 17-day hospital stay for a severe stomach virus. This makes it really frustrating. No Sx (other than mucous in his poop) - no blood on stool (no visual and tested negative the entire time we were in the hospital), no rash, etc. He's only in the 3rd percentile for height/weight (lost nearly 2 lbs when he was sick), but had been gaining well before that.
3. In the absence of other Sx, would you start adding/subtracting foods to determine any change in mucous? Or, is mucous alone not a major issue? He's been super drooley lately too, so that could also be a contributing factor. ALSO, my supply is regulating AGAIN since I EPd for a month, so I'm wondering if he may have a little fore/hind imbalance too. He did have a green mucousy poop last night. First time we've seen green poop in quite a while.
@atcwag I would wait to make any more changes to your diet until the mucous and green poop goes away. If you started adding or removing other foods from your diet now I think it would be hard to figure out what's going on because he's still having some symptoms. I'd wait until all symptoms are completely gone. HTH!
p.s. There are some vegan mac n cheese recipes out there that use butternut squash and nutritional yeast for the sauce (it's supposed to taste cheesy). I haven't tried them myself. I have had cashew cheese (not as mac n cheese but on some chips) and it is pretty good! Just some ideas...
Actually I have made a pasta sauce from butternut and delicata squash, and I like it. I haven't tried adding nutritional yeast to make it taste cheesy, though. It's really filling too.
@mrsking218 Welcome! Yes day 5 is most likely too early to see an improvement in symptoms. If you haven't already, be sure to cut out hidden dairy too. Here's a good list of ingredients to watch out for:
https://www.godairyfree.org/dairy-free-grocery-shopping-guide/dairy-ingredient-list-2
If he doesn't improve in 5 weeks or so, you might need to cut out soy too. Many MPI babies are also intolerant of soy too. Let us know if you need help with that.
The diet change is definitely hard at first, but you will get the hang of it. MSPIMama.com has a lot of good MSPI-friendly recipes. All these check-in posts are archived on our blog, mspimoms.blogspot.com, and we talk about food a LOT, so that's a good resource too.
My DS had other MSPI symptoms also, but from what I understand, there's not a ton of other likely reasons for blood in the stool (there are other causes, just much less common issues). It is difficult to truly "diagnose" MSPI, so the best way to find out for sure is to cut the diary from your diet for about 5 weeks and see if his symptoms improve. Your pedi might want to do another test for blood at that time too.
GL!
DS was dx'ed based on fussiness and blood in his stool. His doctor actually did a bunch of tests on him around 1 month out bc he seemed to be getting worse. Turns out I had been eating chicken stock that had whey in it the whole time I thought I was eating dairy free. Ugh, that was so frustrating! But after that we were even more certain that he was MPI (soy hasn't seemed to be as big of an issue as dairy).
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I'm a fan of The Cloth Diaper Tech Support group on Facebook
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I'm a fan of The Cloth Diaper Tech Support group on Facebook
The no wheat is hard together with the dairy and soy. I've found a lot of the gluten-free stuff has some weird stabilizers in it that I worry about hidden dairy or soy, so I've ended up making a lot of my own baked goods (I make a batch of barley flour muffins almost every week). I usually use this soaked muffin recipe with rice milk and barely flour:https://www.gumshoegastronomy.com/archives/whole-wheat-vegan-muffins
Oh and I use apple cider vinegar instead of white vinegar. I usually use maple syrup but have also used agave nectar.
Barley flour makes great pancakes too.
I haven't found any wraps I like but haven't looked very hard either. There's quinoa/corn pasta that's good, and Tinkyada brown rice pasta is good (some of the other non-wheat pasta's I've tried have a weird texture).
HTH! Let me know if you need any more wheat sub suggestions or just more dairy/soy/wheat free recipes.
Thank you so much for all the bread suggestions. I did go to Whole Foods and found some bread I really like, as well as some tortillas at Trader Joe's. Thanks again!
So we had three days of amazingness - days 4-6 of no dairy/no soy, he was a completely different baby. Very smiley - it was so fun! Then on day 7, the fussiness came back. He is on nebulizer treatments for an upper respitory virus, so I'm hoping it is due to this. I felt so hopeful when we had those good days and so defeated when he started fussing again. We'll see how this weeks goes. His diaper yesterday tested negative for blood, so I guess that is a good sign? We had taken in some earlier in the week and they were still positive. Praying that after he is feeling better my smiley boy comes back! It is going to be so disheartening if we go through this whole converting to non-dairy process and it doesn't help him!
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