Labor Day is one of my favorite holidays. The stifling hot summer heat is coming to an end...usually by now the nights are very cool and crisp but we still have plenty of sunshine and crystal blue skies during the day. Kids are going back to school...the normal routine of the year is starting...And 10 years ago, on the day after labor day, I went into labor with kid #1. Haha.
TEN years. My oldest kid is, in her words, almost a decade old. Gee thanks, kid...way to make your mom feel O-L-D! Although, I really don't mind because those 10 years have been an incredible blessing to our entire family. They always say the first kid raises the parents, not the other way around, and I can, with absoute certainty, wholeheartedly agree.
Kid #1 made her debut after 12 hours of labor, one full week before the events of September 11th. It was quite an experience...she was so little! Little fingers & toes...little skinny legs (which she still has), but what a big mouth! She wasn't too noisy at first - all she did was eat, sleep, and...well, you know how it goes. Soon though, things started changing...I really don't think I managed to log more than 2-3 consecutive hours of sleep at a time and she rarely napped for any length of time either. I just figured that I was "blessed" with a fussy baby, but boy was it a toll on my psyche.
At about 2-3 months of life, she started getting more and more irritable, and I specifically remember very late (or very early, depending on the perspective) one night holding her tight, pacing the floor...back and forth...praying this kid would just close her eyes and relax...and GO TO SLEEP!! After what seemed like countless hours, she finally fluttered her eyes closed....I waited for what I was SURE was an eternity and very slooooowly eased myself into a chair, thighs on fire because I was lowering myself so slowly so I wouldn't wake her...managed to sit and sloooowly ease back into the chair.....and BOOM! Eyes open, kid wailing...mom about ready to throw in the towel to this whole mother-hood thing. I started to notice that she would have bouts of inconsolable crying - screaming, if you will - where NOTHING I did would calm her down. The contents of her diapers changed, too (forgive me, I won't go into details) and despite talking to her doctors during her well checks, raised no alarm whatsoever. She's just a fussy kid. Happens all the time. She'll grow out of it. Real comforting to a brand new mom.
Finally, at one of her well checks, as I'm reiterating everything all over again to another doctor in the practice, my little one decides to fill her diaper, to which the Dr. takes one look and orders a fecal-occult test to check for blood. I saw her face become alarmed as the test came back positive...my face must've turned completely white as I sat down quickly to somewhat digest the news that there was something wrong with my baby. Our doctor quickly reassured me that it was all going to be ok, we'd find out what was going on, and that I was a good mom for continuing to bring up kid #1's issues that everyone else was blowing off. I felt reassured and was so thankful for that.
With a referral to the pediatric GI (gastro-intestinal) specialist in hand, I quickly made an appointment to get things checked out. What was interesting to me, upon arrival I filled out an information packet based almost exclusively on family history - all based on issues with food. Mike's mom swears he had issue with dairy, along with other family members, so essentially once they read my responses on the questionnaire, they immediately diagnosed kid #1 with a dairy and possibly soy allergy. Her intestines were so irritated from the dairy I ate, that they became ulcerous...hence the icky diapers.
I decided to continue to breastfeed, which meant that starting immediately, NO dairy and NO soy (we later figured out it was just dairy, not soy that was the problem). By the time I got home, I was ravenous and the only thing I could find in the house that was ok for me to eat was...nothing. Not one snack-type item, save fruit and veggies, was without dairy and/or soy. This was the beginning of a huge wake-up call. I'm pretty sure the first time I went grocery shopping it took about 2 hours because of all the labels I had to read. I did get good advice though, which I highly recommend to anyone looking to improve their diet: shop the perimeter of the store and skip the aisles. All the fresh stuff is located all around the edges of the store - all the pre-packaged, highly processed stuff lives in the aisles. After about a month, I finally got the diet part under control, and kid #1 started healing...less screaming fits, sleeping better, generally happier. Whew. So by 6 months of age, my baby girl was what was supposed to be her normal self. And, I noticed that I felt different, too. Of course better sleep will do that, but I also felt more alert, like I wasn't in a fog all the time, my frequent stomach aches were gone, and for lack of a better description, I just felt more lively. Hard to explain, but there was a definite difference. I didn't put 2 and 2 together until much later - after a junk food binge (had to wait until the kid stopped nursing and I could eat whatever I wanted again) left me feeling terrible. Quite a revelation...eat crap, feel like crap.
Needless to say, I'm not sorry my firstborn has a dairy allergy. She's willing to try all kinds of foods and eats a generally healthier than the norm diet - and none for the worse. She may complain a bit here and there and finds it thrilling when she meets another dairy-allergic kid (so she can finally commiserate with someone else), but is a very happy, healthy kid whose mom has figured out ways to make even a non dairy cheesecake that tastes pretty darn good. I wouldn't trade those sleepless nights for anything.
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