Of one sort and another 🙂
Max and i had our first weigh in this morning, on our self-imposed healthy eating lark. I lost 2lbs in a week, added to the 2lbs i lost between Xmas and New Year. So i am completely thrilled with myself 🙂 It has made such a difference to have Max being so religiously supportive and helpful, it has really inspired me to do well through the day, knowing he’ll go to the effort of cooking a low-calorie dinner. Thanks darling 🙂
We’ve spent the week trying to cut down on Amelie’s cow’s milk intake – nothing was likely to happen instantly because i don’t have my head round it, feel quite ambivalent about it and generally wasn’t organised. But we swapped her cereal milk for goats milk and i didn’t give her any cheese or buttermilk spread. I tripped up a few times and Max was even less on the ball than i was, and more sceptical, but we probably knocked 80% of the cows milk out of her diet.
2 days in she was no longer sneezing up huge quantities of snot and she wasn’t coughing at night either, first time in a long time. The itchy skin hadn’t gone, but the last 2 nights did seem marginally less distressing for her, especially given she’d been bathed. She slept better and seemed very slightly more relaxed. We’d been making sure she slept earlier too though and trying to concentrate on giving her more attention, so we were still sceptical.
Last night she had ice-cream at tea. By bedtime her face was up in a nasty red rash and she coughed through the evening. Hmmm… we thought. Max tested it again tonight with a yoghurt; red rash on her face again. So i think that we’ll probably have to go with that giving us a bit of a clue and work a bit harder on eliminating the milk. Bit of a drag, to say the least, but it has to be done. Can’t decide if i am relieved, pissed off to have to deal with it, or horrified with myself i took till she was getting on for 4 to spot it 🙁 I’ll leave my ‘bad mummy beating’ for another day. 😉 Luckily i have a book (thanks Jan) and my bestest friend in the entire world has a lactose intolerant child, so she has drilled calcium and iron into me today and told me lots of useful things. I’ll head off for the gp this week and see if we need to get a dieticians advice as well.
Weekend has been lovely, my favourite sort of weekend all round. Yesterday was the tax, of course, but appreciated the fact that Max gave me time to go and get on with that. Can’t remember what else we did, not a lot, but nice family time anyway. Managed to upset Fran thoroughly with a sad Irish fairy story, with the consequence that she had nightmares about Max dying. Ooops 🙁 Other notable event was Josie taking Max a story at bedtime and demanding it was read to her. She is so funny, such a communicator. I still get such a buzz out of my communicating tots, so very different to how the first two were. Or how i was with them then. Or something!
Today was my official birthday; we have a family habit of celebrating them the weekend before, mainly due to the fact that i find celebrating most of the girls’ birthdays on the day quite hard, and the habit has spread to me and Max. This meant i got given my completely fabulous portable photo printer which is just great. I’m so looking foward to having photos around the house again; online is good, but it is lovely to just be able to print one out and put it somewhere 🙂 Girls also gave me a decorated pot, some niknaks and handmade cards, which i appreciated enormously.
I went out in the morning and managed a relaxed walk into town (exercise) to get this and that. Managed to be very frugal on refunds/swapped goods and cash left in bottom of bag and only used my card one out of 4 times. Pretty good 🙂 I could get into this! Back for some playing and “Robots” viewing (I’ll reserve judgement till i’ve seen it all!) and then the big two and i went out swimming. They did very well tonight, both doggy-paddling about a good bit and then floating on their back with a float for a pillow and practising kicking. Had a lovely time.
Anyway, all of them are very much looking forward to this weeks socialising and getting to know some new people. So am i 🙂 And then i daresay i’ll be able to relinquish the diet for a little while to eat some celebratory cake on my birthday on Tuesday 🙂 The weekend bodes well too, with a meeting between me and my two very best friends in the whole world, through 20 years of standing now, getting our children all together for the very first time. Can’t wait 🙂 Roll on this year please.
I can’t believe no health visitor or doctor has encouraged you to try diet restrictions with Ammi before, either – you would have thought it would be the first thing they’d suggest!
Some stuff in your post has got me wondering about Abi, would it be ok to mail you about it?
Will be really interested to hear more about how the dairy-free thing goes 🙂 But really glad it’s looking good so far!
You can Carol, but quite honestly, i’m in the dark and having to learn, so i probably can’t tell you very much!
I tell you what though, Josie had just better stay clean, she’s the only one left who is normal!
I think a gp probably has, but i was convinced that it wasn’t relevant as she never had an upset stomach. My bad, as they say 🙂
I never remember it fluctuating much one way or the other when she was breastfed, nor it changing much when she went on to cows milk, but she had Chicken Pox so soon after that that perhaps it would be hard to really say.
Oh well done you with the diet thing, big pat on the back 🙂
Hi Merry..When Maya was younger her exzema was really bad and i read an article about bathing them twice a day and applying emolients.I was skeptic because i thought it would irritate her more.In fact it cleared her up within weeks and now when my skin plays up i have a bath as well as my daily shower and it clears up .I feel much more irritated and sore if i miss my daily shower.Hope this helps.
Any other help you may want with dairy free stuff feel free to give us a shout, having everyone but me lactose intolerant in the house means we do it all automatically by now! Things to particularly watch out for are lactose in biscuits/crisps/frozen goods because that isn’t where you’d expect to find it. DH also swears that non-organic chicken is pumped with lactose but I haven’t seen any info about that personally. All the major supermarkets will send you lists of their own brand products which contain milk but the packaging info from certainly Tesco and Sainsburys is much better than it used to be. The Vegan Store online does lots of tasty stuff that you don’t find in store and I can recommend Marks & Spencer low fat olive oil spread, no milk products but doesn’t taste totally grim like the soya spreads! Only thing I ever buy in M&S but so worth it! Good luck!
Ooo forgot to say you can buy longlife chocolate soya puddings which go down very well and also the soya yoghurts are very palatable too so she can still eat the same as the others just with substitutions but TBH you’d be just as well switching them all over, apart from my chocolate stash we have no milk/milk containing products in the house at all anymore so there is far less chance of accidental ingestion. Sainsburys own brand jaffa cakes are milk free but most of the rest aren’t and make sure you check your preferred brand of bread!
(Gosh I talk too far too much on this subject!)
Don’t bother with the mummy-bashing Merry, you’re on to it now and many children go far longer than 4 before the link is explored 🙂
Milk free has become so much easier in recent years with supermarkets bringing in their own allergy brands of stuff. And of course they all stock loads of goat and sheep milk/cheese/butter and yogs now too. Just look out for it added into things you wouldn’t expect…processed foods, bread and crisps etc.
I wouldn’t rely on your GP (not GP bashing here, I’m not of that inclination) to be particuarly helpful about this though.
My friend, whose 3 yr old daughter went dairy free at the begining of last year due to eczema and wheezing with fantastic results, has just started re-introducing some dairy and has found her daughter can now cope with some. She did do a *total* elimination for over 10 months, but says it’s well worth it. Good luck 🙂
Also BIG welldone on your weight loss 🙂
Well done on the weight loss Merry! And I’m glad you’re finding something to help Amelie. Perhaps it didn’t show up well before because she had a background amount of cows milk there constantly, even while you were breastfeeding? At least you know now but go easy on yourself, its bound to take alot of adjusting to.
goodnessdirect.co.uk is where I get a lot of dairy free stuff from. The alpro soy puddings are scrummy – Myf loves the chocolate ones. They do all the cheeses, spreads, milk-replacers etc you could want.
SallyM – your DH is right. The water that they soak chicken in to ‘plump’ it up is laced with salts and milk proteins. However, as the food isn’t ‘processed’ and the liquid is technically a ‘wash’ they don’t have to declare it as an ingredient. Normally chicken portions/breasts, rather than whole birds though.
Thanks for all this everyone 🙂