Relactation Journey: Day 31 - Ch-ch-ch-changes!

There have been a couple hurdles along this relactation journey, like my issues with latching. While that's something I'm desperately trying to get over, we came across another barrier that is going to take a lot of tweaking to get right.

As you all know, Tycho is on a soy formula due to his severe milk protein intolerance. Since I already knew this was an issue, I've cut out dairy from my diet for the past two weeks, in the hope that doing so will make for an easy transition to breastmilk.

But I was oh so very wrong.

Despite cutting it out (including hidden sources), the bits of breastmilk that he's been getting instead tore up his stomach. He suddenly started getting gas, rashes, spit-up (he never really did before), booty and skin rashes, multiple bowel movements, and the biggest one, mucus in his stools. Poor babe has been miserable. :(

When this all reached its peak on Thursday, we cut out the breastmilk entirely and switched him back to his soy formula full-time. Since then, we've seen a bit of improvement in all areas, though the booty rash and poo-related issues remain mostly the same. I imagine it'll take a couple weeks for that to really right itself.

(We do realize that it may be an illness and not a result of my milk at all, but we're taking all precautions here, especially since it coincided (maybe cruelly so!) with the addition of breastmilk to his bottles.)

[caption id="attachment_2056" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Naked booty time![/caption]

I emailed my LC in a fit of desperation -- I told her about the sexual trauma and the issues Tycho has had with my milk, and because of the former in particular, she is 100% supportive of whatever I want to do and that a happy, healthy mama is most important (have I mentioned I absolutely adore my LC?). I let her know that I do still want to continue at least getting my production up with at least the goal of bottle-feeding, and she suggested an elimination diet.

Rather than go full-boar and eliminate everything out of my diet, she wants me to remove common allergens and, if not pump 'n' dump, then save any breastmilk that I get for a freezer stash for the next two weeks. So I'll be cutting out:

• dairy (given)


• gluten/wheat


• eggs


• nuts (simple, as I'm allergic to tree nuts, but including peanuts)

Soy should be okay as he can obviously take a soy formula without issue. In time, I should be able to test what he can and cannot tolerate (for a week at a time to be sure it's not a fluke), and will add things back as I can.

In the meantime, this elimination diet effectively make me a gluten-free vegan for an indeterminate amount of time, I've been scouring the internet for blogs on that topic, and I came across a surprising number of good ones! I've added them to my "Foodie Friends" blogroll on the right side if you want to check any of them out.

So... anyone have any tried and true gluten-free vegan recipes? I'm doing this for Tycho, but I'd like for the experience to be delicious, too! ;)