About a month before our big move north, we had to make a drastic change in our family. With two of three babies, the younger two, having digestive issues with milk and just going lactose free for them was not working very well. We thought long and hard about shifting our whole family not only to a lactose free, but dairy free menu. This was going to be HUGE!
Our oldest has quite an affection for dairy in any form. Milk, cheese, you name it. Not only that, but we would have to be very diligent about reading labels because dairy sneaks into the strangest places in commercial products. Casein, Whey, milk, butter, milk powder, and then you have the products that have potentially come into contact with some form of "milk". We were confused. We were determined. We had two, sometimes very miserable, babies that needed everyone in our home on board with changing our lifestyles to make them well. We jumped right in.
My husband and I both agree that going dairy free for us also meant not diving into soy products because of the risk of lots of exposure to plant based estrogen for our growing young men. I know lots of men who grew up on soy products, but we decided that was not the way we were going to go. Our new Vitamix blender became our very best purchase to date in regards to our family.
I could blend up batches of coconut and almond milk. Make dairy free dressings and sauces in no time, and give our babies a nutritionally dense smoothie every day to help supplement the vitamins that they were no longer receiving from dairy products. It is a truly fantastic machine, and it is the only way that our family could make it with the price of dairy free milks on the market. Someday I will share our smoothie recipe, which is pretty versatile, but I usually just throw things in and eyeball it so I will actually have to measure it out in order to do that.
After one month of being off all forms of dairy our two youngest babies finally were not having the digestive problems of the past. No diarrhea, which had plagued our middle child for over a year. No throwing up at least once or twice a week. Improvement of skin rashes that had begun to develop on both children. Even their attitude and energy levels improved...all 3 of them benefitted in this way! The real surprise was that my husband and myself had noticed changes in our own bodies and attitudes. THIS was the what we needed to do for our family.
Our pediatrician had not felt the need to test our kids for sensitivities or allergies, even when presented with the symptoms, because they were growing and "healthy" otherwise. But, as a momma it breaks you down to not know why your kids are having some digestive problem, or a strange skin break out, and you don't know what to do about it.
It was my husband and I that took our middle son off of lactose, with small improvement in his body. And it was our drive to truly fix the problem and change our entire menu for the entire household, FOR these little people God gave us, that really made the difference. My husband even had a co-worker get almost angry at him for going dairy free like we did, because he didn't see the point if he wasn't allergic as well. Like we now tell our oldest child...sometimes you do what is best for the people you care about even if it is an inconvenience to you. This is probably the second greatest lesson we learned by doing this. The first is to not be afraid to try everything to make your babies well because it is the right thing to do.
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