Dairy Sensitivity Update

It turns out Teresa definitely cannot tolerate the cow's milk protein that shows up in my breastmilk when I've eaten anything dairy. After last week's checkup, her dirty diapers revealed that something was persistently irritating her bowels - she had all the classic symptoms of a dairy intolerance, including blood in her stools. Yikes. So I started cutting the dairy out of my diet. I last drank milk on Friday and I last ate something with the sneaky ingredient whey on Sunday. Poor Teresa's temperament and bowel movements have been improving steadily. I took her to see the nurse practitioner today and had a recent sample tested - no trace of blood.

Teresa still has episodes of painful gas and other gastrointestinal difficulty, so we've gotten the Mylicon and will see if it helps. But, overall, she does seem to be crying less.

I became a bit concerned a few days ago that my milk supply was declining; Teresa was nursing infrequently and didn't seem to get much when she did nurse (although it's difficult to tell exactly how much a baby is getting). Since her birth, many people have encouraged me to wake her and try to make her eat if she slept longer than 3 hours during the day. I preferred to let Teresa let me know when she was hungry. Now I was worried that I made the wrong choice and we wouldn't be able to continue breastfeeding exclusively. I combated my fear by praying that God would increase my milk supply somehow.

God is good! Starting yesterday morning, Teresa has been an eating machine. Although I'm quite exhausted from a much-interrupted night of sleep, Teresa is obviously growing. With clothes on, she weighed 8 lbs. 14 oz. at the doctor's office this afternoon. That's a 12-14 oz. improvement in just one week!

We still haven't kicked the thrush, though. I need to be more diligent about applying the nystatin to Teresa's tongue and to me. Every so often she will stick out her tongue repeatedly, as though the yeast infection is really bothering her. I pray that it, too, will be a thing of the past very soon!

Here she is hollering to be picked up: