Baby E's Reactions

Baby E has been having reactions off and on all week . . . fussiness, discomfort, headaches & stomach aches, rashes on her cheeks and tummy, etc.

She wouldn't eat the tomato dish we had earlier this week . . . she took one taste and then kept spitting and sticking her finger down her throat and gagging herself. I've never been able to get her to eat anything with any kind of tomatoes in it though. I don't know if she didn't like the flavor or if she has a problem with tomatoes. It's so hard to figure these things out.

She's been in orange and red levels fairly often this week, for the first time in weeks. And she's been amazingly short-fused, throwing tantrums, hitting and screaming with little or no provocation every few minutes some days (mostly the days I didn't blog, LOL).

Her rashes happen frequently, but the other symptoms have been less common lately. That in itself is amazing--a couple of months ago this "bad week" for Baby E would have been a good week, comparatively.

Still, her mild to moderate allergic reactions are pretty much life as normal here. I'd like to get her to the point where that isn't the case.

I think I did figure out what was causing the reactions she was having earlier this week.

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I found out that Sunbutter and Trader Joe's brand sunflower butter both have unlabeled added soy (mono- and diglycerides in sunbutter, tocopherols in the TJs brand) even though they have stringent anti-cross-contamination procedures in the factory to keep soy from getting into the sunbutter where they are roasted.

The roasting belt is the only overlap of shared equipment, and they have pretty extensive cleaning processes between roasting different things. They even have special machines and procedures to minimize getting any allergens in the air.

I had been giving the TJ's brand a try after the reassurances from TJ's about the manufacturing, and after they assured me there were no soy products or anything unlabeled added to the sunflower butter.

They were wrong, as I found out once I actually tracked down the manufacturer and talked directly to them about it. Just getting traces of it in my milk was enough to bother her--unless, of course, she's allergic to sunflower seeds. Who knows? Ugh.

Of course, it could also be the yeast-free bread we'd been trying again, or the chocolate. Or the small amounts of cane sugar.

Apparently a day or two of no observable reaction is not enough to tell whether something is really bothering Baby E. We're going to have to take all those things out of our diet again for a few weeks, and then stick to introducing/trialing just one new thing per week. That way we'll catch the delayed or dose-related reactions that take a few days to build up. As it is, allowing only 2-3 days between trying things just isn't working.

Last night and today she's definitely reacting more strongly to something new, and something in my milk. We both ate the same things yesterday, so whatever it is she would have gotten both directly and in my milk.

She is fussing and squirming a lot while nursing (one of her classic symptoms), has a mild rash on her cheeks and tummy, is saying "ow" a lot and banging on her head or tummy, insisting she needs to use the potty every few minutes but not going (stomach cramps, perhaps?), fussing constantly, and was awake and uncomfortable for most of the night (DH got up with her--bless him!).

I'm guessing it could be the millet--a grain which (like most grains) is related to corn. Or it could be the cane sugar or something else in the lollipops--sugar cane is also related to corn.

Quite possibly whatever she's reacting to is what I'm reacting to also. I still don't feel well this morning. That and the fact that Baby E is still having issues with my milk tells me that whatever it was isn't yet out of my system.

Now Baby E is napping and DH just got up so I can go back to bed.