End of July

Our county fair starts this weekend, and they're accepting entries over the next few days. AJ and M&M have been working hard drawing pictures to enter in the fair. It will be their first year making entries, and I'm excited for them.

Baby E will be two on Friday. It's hard to believe, isn't it?

Everyone seems to be quite healthy at the moment. And, we have exciting news on the food front!

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Last week we reintroduced the Trader Joe's brand plain yogurt, which is made from grass-fed cow's milk with no additives other than the yogurt cultures. She had seemed to tolerate it before, but after the GI specialist decided she was lactose intolerant, she advised that we not give E dairy products.

Then I started doing some reading on lactose intolerance, and discovered that if E was truly lactose intolerant, she wouldn't be able to tolerate breastmilk. Uh, yeah. Not only can she tolerate it, but the tests showed that breastmilk was not causing her to have sugars in her stools. So I decided there was no reason to withold the yogurt she loves so much if she can tolerate it fine.

E has been eating increasing quantities of yogurt for the past week with no issues whatsoever.

Yesterday, we trialed her on oats. I came up with a recipe using soaked oats and sourdough starter, which the kids loved. Baby E ate several pancakes and had no reaction whatsoever. Eating a muffin made from the same batter today had no ill effects, either.

For lunch today, she had half a banana. She was so excited and wanted more, We're wanting to trial her on as many things as possible before her allergist appointment later this week, so we're moving more quickly than usual with adding things. I'm going to retry the yogurt made with milk from corn-fed goats in a couple of days if all goes well.

I'm so thrilled that all of this is going so well. I suspect that the bananas may give her issues (even if not an allergic-type reaction) just because she tends to have issues with most fruits.

****Update: she had diarrhea within 20 minutes of eating half a banana, after having beautifully normal BMs yesterday and this morning. It's a more severe and immediate reaction than she normally gets from similar quantities of other fruits, but no rash or anything so far, so who knows? We'll see what the allergist says.****

A doctor friend told me that, despite the GI specialist's assertions, the reducing substances test is not specific for lactose--it could also be positive because of fructose or some other sugars.

Since the test was positive when Baby E was eating fruit and negative when she was completely off all sugars, then positive again when we started giving her fruit and unrefined sugars again, it could certainly be a sugar in fruits that is causing her issues. I really doubt that the few spoonfuls of yogurt she had a day or three before the third test would be enough to create a positive result when large quantities of breastmilk didn't.

Most fruits do seem to go right through her and give her abnormal, sweet-smelling stools. That, of course, would be an intolerance rather than an allergy--probably her body just doesn't produce enough of the enzyme that breaks down fructose.

I've been doing quite a bit of reading about lactose intolerance vs. milk allergy.

I'm thinking that what I have is lactose intolerance rather than a milk protein allergy, because of the symptoms and patterns of my symptoms. I'm guessing that because I went completely off dairy products for so long, my body stopped producing what little lactase enzyme it was making. It was to the point where even one tablespoon of kefir gave me uncomfortable intestinal symtpoms.

I recently read a study that found that people with lactose intolerance could gradually increase their lactase production (and tolerance of dairy products) by starting with very small amounts of dairy and eating it regularly, gradually increasing the amount. I've been trying that approach for about a week now. I started with just a very tiny amount of Baby E's yogurt and worked my way up to a teaspoon a day. Yogurt is very low in lactose, but even that small amount was enough to give me mild to moderate discomfort. I kept doing that until I stopped getting intestinal discomfort from a teaspoon of yogurt, then gradually increased the amount. I'm up to a tablespoon or two of yogurt per day without significant discomfort now. That's encouraging.

We're still making progress on the house, and on decisions regarding curriculum and meat purchases. The garden is producing enough now that we need only buy a few things here and there at the store (potatoes, onions, etc.) and are getting most of our veggies from our own back yard.

Overall, life is pretty good.