Post by fortmyersbride on Apr 27, 2015 20:48:48 GMT -5
TBH, it doesn't sound like a straight forward food intolerance, although I suppose that could be part of the puzzle. Some of the things you've said have made me think motility issue, and if your pedi suggests that may be a possibility- I highly recommend the GI group at CMH. DD1 rarely slept more than 45 min in a row until 14 mos, awakening from abdominal pain. It was the regimens from her GI specialists that helped our sanity.
He will suck on it maybe three or four times and then tries to push it out by sweeping his tongue side to side. It feels like his tongue makes a big hump at the back of his throat.
We did get some exercises to strengthen his suck from one of the lactation consultant but I haven't seen any progress.
There are a few things you should feel. First, the tongue should form a trough, which is a groove down the center down the length of the tongue longitudinally. The outside sections of his tongue should be reaching up toward his palate with each suck. Like you mentioned, the back of his tongue should elevate slightly. But in addition to that you should feel a wave-like motion of lifting and lowering from front to back. I've found that disorganization, both of tongue pattern and of the suck-swallow-breath chain, is often an issue after clipping, perhaps more so than strength.
If you do think it's an issue with being able to extract milk via sucking, maybe look into a Haberman nipple?
Dumb dairy question: if something says its lactose free, does that mean it's okay?
Like @republicrat said, it's usually not lactose that's the issue with babies; it's the milk proteins. Unfortunately that means that if you cut hidden dairy, a lot of things labeled lactose free or even dairy free really aren't. Top 8 allergens (which include dairy) do have to be labeled in bold under the ingredient list, though, so look there - it'll say "Contains milk" in bold if there's any dairy in it at all.
Even though I ended up having to cut hidden dairy, soy, and beef with DD to get all of her reflux to go away, I did see a big difference from cutting major dairy. Like you, I realized that my diet was super heavy in dairy, so the first few weeks were hard just because I was trying to figure out what I could eat. Eventually, it really did become easy - to the point where I considered not even adding dairy back into my diet when I was finally able to, and I was a huge dairy lover prior to DD.
Weelicious has a dairy-free section of their website, and paleo or vegan recipes are automatically dairy-free. Some of those recipes are still in our regular rotation. I also agree with trying to focus on things you can eat instead of finding substitutions at first (although I really liked the So Delicious coconut creamer for my coffee...I direly needed a substitute for creamer) because navigating substitutions can be really frustrating at first. There are some good options, but personally, I wasn't ready to deal with all of that until I was past the constantly starving because I didn't know what snacks to eat stage. (Almonds and avocados made up a HUGE portion of my daily calories until I was ready to figure out more complicated options.) Same for recipes - it was less frustration/emotionally-charged for me to just search for MSPI-friendly recipes on Pinterest than it was to go through my normal recipes and try to figure out what I could modify or eat at first.
I haven't made any diet changes. That's probably my next step. I've been hesitant to, just because his poop is really normal. I've always read that with dairy intolerance there's abnormalities there and I see none.
C had no poop related signs of dairy intolerance. I would keep a food diary and see if you can figure it out!
If his diapers are normal and his gas seems primarily right after a feeding, I think I would wait on cutting out all dairy products, especially if that's a normal part of your diet (& stuff you love to eat). It's the popping on/off that's causing the gas, probably not the dairy already that quickly.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is the only thing that seems to match with dairy intolerance the gas? If so, I think I'd hold off now on going to extreme dairy cutting measures. Avoid large glasses of milk or big bowls of ice cream if that makes you feel like you're doing SOMETHING while you wait, but save yourself the stress until after you've met with your doctor. While dairy intolerance is certainly a real issue, it's also blamed far too often when it's not the problem. It takes 2 weeks for it to leave your system, so you won't see immediate effects anyway.
I just think you're already really stressed about the situation (& understandably so) and cutting out foods you love isn't going to make much (if any) difference at this point. One or maybe two things align with dairy intolerance. A heck of a lot more (including the most important, your mother's intuition) points to trouble with his suck-swallow-breathe coordination.
Hang in there. You're doing a great job with all of this.
My son did the popping on and off.. It's like he knew it was going to make him feel bad but he was so hungry.. It was really sad