Dairy Free

Because Natalie has been spitting up a lot (or at least it looks like a lot to me), I was worried that she wasn't getting enough to eat - that her burp rags held more milk than her stomach. She weighed 8lbs, 13oz last Thursday when I took her into the pediatrician. And I was hoping I could stop by today and get her weighed again, but they charge $55 for a weight check! That's more than my copay for a normal office visit. Insanity.

So I took Natalie to Baptist Hospital to get her weighed at the lactation office. She weighed 8lbs, 15oz. That's on the low end of 'normal' weight gain (1/2oz - 1oz per day) but the scale at Baptist might be calibrated differently than the scale at the pediatrician's office, so this might not be a good judge of appropriate weight gain.

The lactation consultant suggested I cut dairy out of my diet for 10 days to see if that's the cause of her spitting up. There's something in cow's milk that baby stomachs have a hard time digesting. So if in 10 days, she seems better, then we know what the culprit is. My consultant also said that after 10 days, I could slowly add dairy back into my diet, just a pared down version of what I was eating before.

But giving up dairy for 10 whole days? That's gonna be rough. No matter how poor Lee and I might get, we will always have cheese and organic milk (I'm ashamed to admit that I'm a total milk snob). So now I have to think of other mid-morning snacks to eat ... and I have to think of other ways for me to get enough protein.

But if it helps her feel better and helps her to gain weight, I'll do it. I've kinda gotten attached to her over the past 3.5 weeks ...