Total Elimination Diet

Well. I was really hoping it wouldn't come to this. My tiny baby is perfect in every way except for his poor little tummy. He is so content, and so peaceful until about 15-30 minutes after many (most but not all) of his feedings. At which point he starts pumping his legs, writhing in pain, and screaming. Not crying, screaming. He farts and he seems better. Until the next wave of gas hits and this scenario repeats. It lasts for anywhere from 5 minutes to 45 minutes and breaks my heart to watch because I can not help him. Gripe water has not worked. Mylicon drops have not worked. Burping him does not work. He is also dealing with reflux and increased mucus production - both with his stools and with nasal congestion.

I tried cutting out dairy. I made it for about 10 days and saw no improvement. I tried cutting out acidic foods like citrus and tomatoes for about a week and saw no improvement there. Unfortunately, the less extreme method of identifying food sensitivity (I'll explain down below why I don't think it's a full blown allergy) is like finding a needle in a haystack. Eliminate one food. See what happens. Repeat. There are 2 problems with this approach. 1 - It really takes up to 3 weeks for some allergens to get completely out of the mother's system. Waiting 3 weeks per food is a lot of time for a guessing game. My baby could turn 1 before I eliminated the right food. 2 - If it is multiple foods, you are basically screwed with this approach. Not only did I not wait long enough when I eliminated dairy, but if he has sensitivity to dairy and soy then eliminating one doesn't help him and therefore doesn't help me identify the eliminated food as a problem.

So where does that leave us? With something called the total elimination diet. The details are here: http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/feeding-infants-toddlers/food-allergies/elimination-diet

Basically you cut your diet back to an extremely limited number of foods that are very rare offenders and start there. It's extreme, and I've heard it's miserable. But so is watching your baby fight with intestinal discomfort constantly. I'm modifying Dr. Sears recommended foods just a bit. I couldn't find free range turkey, so I'm doing chicken instead. If it is a corn or soy allergy, it's important that the meat I'm eating not be full of corn or soy. So I decided that organic free range chicken was better than non-organic turkey. I am also going to eat apples and maybe bananas. Some other TED diets allow both. Adding apples gives me some more variety and it's much easier to find apple sauce and juice than pear. I'm still undecided on the bananas. We'll see how horrible this diet is a couple days in.

So tomorrow I will start living on rice, potatoes, squash, chicken, apples, pears, and olive oil - all organic. Oh yeah, and salt and pepper. God help me. I should be a royal bitch in no time flat. Thankfully there are tons of rice derivatives. There is rice flour, so I can coat my chicken in it and fry it in the olive oil. There is rice pasta, rice cereal, rice milk. I've also got some rice cakes - GROSS, but I need readily available snacks. I also found some plain organic potato chips - just potatoes and salt. I have a whole chicken that I'll put in the crock pot with some potatoes for dinner tomorrow night. I plan on shredding some potatoes and frying them up for hash browns. I have ground chicken for "burgers." Damn, this is going to suck. I ENJOY food.

Supposedly this is a WONDERFUL weight loss diet, which is not a good thing for breastfeeding women. Losing too much weight too quickly is really bad for milk supply, so I've been reading that when doing a TED and breastfeeding that the key is to eat all the time. Don't be afraid to use your oils of choice liberally and don't skimp on the protein.

So yes, it's very extreme. But here's the good part. You do this for 1-2 weeks. (I'm committing to 1 week and then reevaluating the situation.) If the baby is better, you have eliminated his pain much faster than with the method above. And mom can start adding foods back in fairly quickly - a new food every 3 to 4 days. And it gives you a much clearer picture as to what upsets the baby, particularly if it's multiple offenders.

I'm already salivating at what food I want to add back first . . .

A note about food allergy vs sensitivity. I don't think we are dealing with an allergy here. Allergies usually have much more severe symptoms such as colic, vomiting, diarrhea, eczema, poor weight gain, etc. I think we are dealing with a sensitivity. Severe gas pain, reflux (but not vomiting), and increased mucus production are our main problems right now. He loves to eat, is gaining weight like crazy, and is happy/content virtually all the time once he passes his gas. So assuming I can find a new diet that eliminates these current problems, I shouldn't have to throw out my 120+ ounce freezer stash of breast milk. Since he only gets that milk in small quantities here and there, it's actually a good way to make sure he continues to have some limited exposures to offending foods to help his body process them - without overloading him with it at every feeding. If his symptoms worsen and we have a full blown allergy, I will be tossing a ton of breast milk and crying over it - a lot.

One final note. If his symptoms do not improve on this TED, then we can assume that his tummy problems are not related to my diet and that as his digestive system matures he will hopefully outgrow the problems. That is a very possible outcome of this whole experiment - I just have to do everything I can to make sure I'm not causing him this pain.

I'm currently enjoying my last glass of wine for a while. Cheers.