No cows allowed!

I realized I have neglected to mention Evan's dietary preferences. Or allergies, or intolerances, or whatever verbiage one chooses. As Evan turned about two weeks old, we entered a really tough patch for a few weeks, as we discovered we had a really gassy baby on our hands. For awhile we lamented the possibility that our baby was...duh-duh-duhhhh...COLICKY...but in the end it happily turned out not to be the case. All we knew was that Evan had started to scream uncontrollably at times and was not easily soothed. After a couple of days of this we decided that a) my mom had left too soon (we weren't getting any sleep!) and b) we had to ask for help. An occupational therapist friend of ours who works with the early intervention population came over to teach us some sensory soothing techniques. These strategies were actually really helpful...for about ten seconds, until Evan started screaming again. She suggested he probably had really bad gas, and a phone call to the pediatrician the next day confirmed it. So, we started him on Milicon, and life became a little bit easier. Except that we kept forgetting to give it to him - oops. Hey, we were tired!

Around this time I decided I better take a closer look at my diet to see if there was anything I was eating that set him off. My mom suggested cutitng out the dairy, as that's what my cousin Peg had to do, and my sister-in-law Charis suggested eating a bland diet, namely cutting out anything acidic or spicy. With a little trial and error, we came up with the theory that dairy is the culprit. This initially was tragic news for me, as we all know how much milk and cheese I ate when preggos, but after a few days of having a happy, settled baby, I quickly realized no cheese is worth seeing my baby so uncomfortable. We think he also developed some sort of eczema due to this, though the doctor assured me (via phone) that this was likely just baby acne. I prefer to believe it was a combination of the two, but I digress.

So, with dairy as a non-option, we set out to the store and bought lots of soy milk products. BAD idea. Turns out, whereas cow's milk made poor Evan really gassy, soy milk makes him spit up like it's his job. Back to square one! However was I going to eat my cereal in the morning? Happily, Dave's mom suggested rice drink, and so far so good. I have since done a bunch of reading and found out that dairy and soy are the two most common "allergies" for babies to have. Go figure. At least he should eventually grow out of it, so says the literature. So, as for now, the only cow around our house is the cow print on Evan's diaper...sigh.