Diary of a Dairy Allergy Mom

So I need to work on my title a little. But it's true, Jack has a dairy allergy. Not just the he needs lactose added to his milk to allow his stomach to digest it properly (aka drinking Lactaid milk), he cannot have dairy. (Although we're not sure what part of the dairy he's allergic to, the protein, the lecithin, etc.)

I was confused at first because we are HUGE believers in milk and milk products in this family. Cheese, yogurt and cows milk are three staples we almost always have in our house, and things Jack has eaten for almost 9 months at almost every meal without any problems. And so I was wondering how he could be completely fine one day and then totally allergic this next. My doctor seems to think Jack was borderline allergic, and then got a virus that tipped his stomach over the scale to develop this allergy. it's just what happens in kids. (And I hear the same thing happens when the allergy is gone, it will just randomly leave one day.)

At first it was a big learning curve to figure out what milk products were in our food, and remembering Jack couldn't eat it- so we probably shouldn't be eating it for dinner or in front of him. Sometimes we would forget or wouldn't be as diligent at checking ingredients, and so some diarrhea later, we would trace it back to the source. Good thing he's not severely allergic, I don't like being hyper paranoid about things. He stopped consistently throwing up about a week after we stopped milk products, and has only thrown up once since that time. His diarrhea comes and goes, sometimes to the extent that I think he might be allergic to something else, but then I wonder if it just takes two days or so to get a little bit of dairy out of his system.

We have been making our food from scratch for awhile now with Eric losing his job and us moving out to MA and starting grad school and not having very much money and the such, and now I just leave out a few more ingredients than I did before. No more cream of chicken soup, cheese (obviously), and/or sour cream, cream cheese- anything with cream or cheese in the title is a now a no go.

Sometimes I make his food separately from ours dairy free. Like mashed potatoes with the leftover potato water and spread instead of milk and butter. So he still eats what we eat, we just get the dairy benefits. I realized I recently have stopped making many of my casseroles and have just been cooking the meat separate from the rice/potato/bread and vegetables. That makes substituting for Jack really easy, and actually it makes dinner really easy. I just think o.k. we're having oven baked chicken with rice and brocolli for dinner tonight, rather than my chicken rice brocolli bake.

Thank goodness Jack can drink soy milk. We put soy milk on his cereal in the morning. I also usually just substitute soy milk for regular milk and add more baking powder, and Eric hasn't even noticed a huge difference. And there are many items that are surprisingly made with soy instead of milk, normal foods not overpriced whole foods type stuff. Like graham crackers and animal cookies. Not all of them, but many if you look on the ingredient list. There are a few cake mixes and frostings that also do not have milk products. Duncan Hines has one or two flavors without them. He also likes soy milk straight up- actually Almond Milk is his favorite- and I have to agree it does taste delicious! Well, the Silk brand at least, we haven't tried any others yet. We also bought some soy yogurt the other day when it was on sale, and then we used some of that and his soy milk to make a huge batch of homemade soy yogurt. It actually didn't work out too bad at all. You can check out more details about how I did that here. Here's another way to do it if you don't have a crockpot.

I also made some amazing pancakes the other day that I then stuck in my freezer. Someone recommended taking freezer pancakes and heating them in the toaster rather than the microwave, and I now don't want to eat normal pancakes. I love the crispy on the outside but warm and cooked on the inside texture to them when cooked this way. Seriously try it. And try these oatmeal banana whole wheat pancakes, if you triple the recipe you will be very happy to pull these babies out of the freezer at any moment. And don't worry I'm not one of those freezer cooking moms that cook one day and they have enough to feed their families for one year. (I don't always like the texture of EVERYTHING we have for dinner to come from the freezer.) I have found that if I double or triple recipes I am making anyway, I just stick the leftovers in the freezer, and I feel my time is well spent cooking that meal that night. (I substituted soy for the milk, and left out the dry powdered milk- still a milk product!- and it worked great)

All in all, it hasn't been very bad. Fruit and veggies don't have milk in them, so eating these basics have obviously not changed. And thank goodness our peanut butter doesn't have any milk products in them, that's a good source of protein Jack does eat! And since milk is still crazy expensive out here as compared to Utah, the soy milk with a coupon hasn't been all the more expensive than regular milk.

We're going to try making soy ice cream in our ice cream maker for Jack in the next few weeks, and every so often we do try to give Jack something that might have a little milk in it and see how he does. So far, not so good, but it hasn't been horrible. Although we do notice his mood usually is negatively affected, as he might not feel very good when he eats it.

The moral of this diary entry? If your child or YOU become allergic to milk, don't panic! There are far worse things to be allergic to, (like WHEAT!!!) and although you might stop your consumption of cheese and yogurt, there are still other foods that fulfill these nutrients for your body. Enjoy.