Bye-bye cheese

[celticdragonfly]

The week before last, Jamie was having a very rough week. Acting difficult, communicating poorly or not at all, lots of stimming, and lots of awful diapers. Speech therapy with Kathy last week was pretty bad - mostly did some PT for him and discussed prospects for him needing continued help after age 3. Sigh.

I kept looking at these awful diapers and thinking I *KNOW* I'm not letting him get anything with eggs in it, what is the problem? It occurred to me maybe it was something else in his diet. Started thinking about taking dairy out, as the first step of seeing if he needs GFCF like Brendan does. Oh, I hope he doesn't, that was such a pain. Started thinking how can I do that, he eats SO much cheese - then realized oh no, it's exactly the mental train of thought that most parents use to explain why their kid can't go on GFCF, but generally means they really need it. Well, not as bad as some of them are, but still.

So for a week Jamie has been very low dairy. I'm not scrutinizing labels on everything the way I did for Brendan, but no cheese, nothing with cheese in it, avoiding anything with obvious milk.

His diapers are significantly improved. His speech is improved. I think his behavior is improved - he'll take the thumb out of his mouth more often, I'm getting kisses again - whole clusters of them. He's easier to be around. He's taking more interest in early potty training.

I'm having very mixed feelings. Glad of the improvement, annoyed to think I'm going to have to keep ANOTHER major ingredient out of his diet. Although really it's too early to be sure - it *might* just be he had a bad week, and is having a good week, and it's not connected. Need to keep him off it for a while longer, then maybe test it. Gah.

We're out of bread, and between needing it for more nondairy food options (please please don't let him need to go wheat free...) and wanting to avoid the usual buttermilk bread we buy, I'm baking today. It's a dairy-free three-rising batter rising bread, a lot of work but it's supposed to produce a very fine loaf. We'll see how it does.

I'm tired - in addition to being halfway through bread baking, today I made hot breakfasts for Karl and the kids, took out trash, am doing laundry, did dishes, cleaned and vacuumed the living room, bathed and dressed the kids, swept the kitchen, and got Jamie through speech. Which went pretty well, LOTS better than last week. Now I'm making their lunches.

Comments

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

The thing is, the kids don't drink milk. We cook with it some, yes. But not drink it. Mainly they eat a lot of cheese and a lot of mac-n-cheese. They don't even have it with cereal much, although Jamie occasionally will be willing to do that. Generally they have cereal dry.