Changing up the Menu

Unfortunately, it seems that Meredith has definitely inherited Kris’ milk allergy (he has a true allergy, not an intolerance). She went five or six months almost 100% potty trained, though she would occasionally have a few days in a row with a lot of accidents. Then a couple of months ago I connected the dots: she peed five times in two hours (and didn’t make it to the toilet any of those times), when often she can go six or seven hours without having to pee at all. The night before Kris had bought a litre of milk (which we rarely buy) and she had drank most of it herself in less than 24 hours. We already didn’t eat much dairy anyway (mostly just butter and yogurt and the occasional box of Annie’s pasta, which is what Kris had bought the milk for that weekend), but we decided to cut back all the way. That week, the accidents dropped to pretty much none. Then we went to a birthday party and she wet the bed that night (which is extremely rare for her). Over Christmas was a hard time to be dairy free, especially for a kid who is used to having dairy pretty much whenever. Her favorite candy used to be Smarties, but she is adjusting to alternatives and we offer things like the fruit-juice flavoured gummies and she’s pretty open to those instead. We stopped buying any new dairy to bring into the house, and tried to minimize it while out. I think she must have adjusted to just the small amounts we were having prior to confirming the allergy, because after we stopped buying it altogether, she started having accidents with even small amounts of it. It’s been a bit of an adjustment for all of us, especially since we also try to minimize soy and that’s what most alternatives are made from. I discovered this past week that our local health food store has coconut milk ice cream (and possibly yogurt too), so I’m going to try some! Now that Christmas is over it’s been a lot easier to be dairy free and she seems to have gained back a lot of the control that it felt like she’d lost for a while.

I think a lot of people don’t realize just how much a seemingly-mild allergy can really affect a person. For Meredith, besides far fewer accidents and the bed wetting, other symptoms she had while we were eating dairy that have disappeared or minimized (some of which I didn’t even think might be abnormal for her) are frequent night waking (and I do believe that for some kids it’s likely normal to wake up at night, and she still wakes once or twice most nights, but prior to discovering the allergy she was still waking up every two hours most nights), cradle cap, gagging when she cries (which again can be normal, but also is apparently a symptom of increased congestion and congestion is one of Kris’ main symptoms), etc. Kris’ tell-tale symptom is his eczema, which is pretty much gone now but while we were eating dairy it was quite bad.

One of the side effects of this is that we’ve had to become creative with our meal plans. Almost all of our dinners are completely from scratch, but many of them have dairy in them. Some of our favourites have been easy to find dairy-free and soy-free substitutes for (like Shepherd’s Pie); others have pretty much been taken off the list (like chicken burritos and meatball stroganoff, both of which have sour cream and the burritos have cheese too). So far rice milk hasn’t failed us in baking or cooking, and we’ve used coconut oil in place of butter with no problems (including one of my favourite cookie recipes). I make bread a few times a week and have been able to make the loaves completely dairy free. We’ve been trying out new recipes we haven’t tried before, and this week’s meal plan is actually mostly recipes we haven’t ever tried before. I’m excited to try them all out and add some more variety to our menu. Since we’re changing things up anyway, we also want to start eating one or two fish meals a week again (we have in the past but earlier in this pregnancy I had a huge aversion to most fish and we never really got back into eating it that often again, plus we’re picky about the fish we’ll eat), as well as one or two vegetarian meals a week (because they are often cheaper, and it will add more variety to our protein). I have a few recipes we’ve tried and liked that I want to save, and will post them over the next few days as I get a chance (as this is the place most of my favourite recipes end up getting saved to).

I’ve also had to completely rethink our meal plan for after the baby comes. Sometime in the next couple of weeks we are planning a cooking spree, and will be cooking a whole bunch of meals to freeze. Originally, I had things like lasagne, the aforementioned chicken burritos (they’d make great lunches), alfredo sauce, cream soups, etc. I have a recipe for yam and bean burritos I’m excited to try instead, and I’ve since made cream soups with rice milk. This means the baby will start off completely dairy-free as well. Meredith spat up and threw up a lot (but was pretty happy otherwise, as long as she was being held), but we attributed it to my extremely overactive let down. She gagged a lot while nursing too (again because of the let down). I wonder now though if some of it at least might have been attributable to dairy and I’m curious if this baby will spit up as much as she did.

Related posts:

1. Meal Plans
2. Fight Back Friday
3. Dairy-free Caesar Dressing
4. Dairy-Free Nanaimo Bars
5. Baby-Led Weaning