the no dairy sleep solution

For several weeks, my sleep went down the crapper. Not just nighttime, either--but naps. For some reason I wasn't getting any. She would thrash, and then not sleep long enough for me to fall asleep anyway.
This was disheartening since I gave up wheat (again) to try to remedy bad sleep. And it seemed to be working...for about three days. Then we had several more weeks of crappy sleep.
Then I did a little a little thinking/triangulation and realized this particular bout of sleep deprivation and realized that it started round about when I decided to sample a pint of goats' milk vanilla yogurt.
MMMMMmmmmm. Creamy vanilla goodness (for those of you who are thinking, Goat milk yogurt? Ugh, may I remind you that I haven't had any dairy for eleven months?). I bought another pint. And another. I was on my fourth in about three weeks.
Anything that tasted that good just had to be giving Lucy problems, right?
Two days of no yogurt, and she's been sleeping much much much better. And taking actual naps!
Much as I love creamy vanilla goodness, I love sleep more.
I wonder: you can make ice cream from breastmilk? Perhaps I should try pumping again.

one step back

A week or so ago I started writing a triumphant post about how our allergy problems seemed to be getting better. I have tentatively eaten wheat and soy fairly regularly in the last month, with only minimal problems. I didn't think we were out of the woods yet, but I was happy to report that I could see the light shimmering through the branches.
I haven't finished the post. Which is good because I'd have to put a huge asterisk after basically every sentence.

Last Sunday, Lucy was playing happily in the kitchen when Dyami noticed she had a red patch on her face.
"Did she scratch herself?" he asked.
I stooped down. It did look remarkably like scratches--sort of like she'd rubbed up against sandpaper.
She didn't seem to be unhappy or in pain at all, so I went back to what I was doing.
A minute later, I looked down. The red patch no longer looked like scratches--the white spaces had filled in with pink.
"She's got something in her mouth," said Dyami, his tone slightly more worried.
I did an exploratory swipe and extracted two miniscule white pieces of something. With mama aplomb, I popped them into my mouth and tasted.
Nuts. Probably almonds.
"Oh, crap," I said.
Now the red patch had extended to the side of her nose.
"Are we going to be taking her to the emergency room?" Dyami asked.
I picked Lucy up and took off her shirt to check for other hives. All clear.
"We should just wait," I said. "It doesn't look that swift, though. If she starts wheezing, we'll worry."
"Maybe now is a good time to go over our emergency plan," he said.
For the next hour or so we watched Lucy, on tenterhooks.
Thank God the patch just faded to nothing. Today I noticed some very faint dark scab-ish lines where the patch was.

So now we know she has some sort of sensitivity or allergy to nuts, probably almonds. An allergy that involves red skin reactions, and occurs only with touch. Perhaps she rubbed the nuts on her face, or scratched her skin after picking up the nuts. Or maybe she swallowed a tiny bit. Who knows?
Oh, Joy! I had been kind of glad not to be dealing with truly scary allergies that potentially involved hospital visits. Argh.

But the final kicker was when I was talking to Hack Mommy about it. Her kids have a wide assortment of allergies and associated reactions ranging from vomiting to hives. It makes life at her house fun and interesting!
"You probably shouldn't eat nuts while you're nursing," she said.
I stopped, looked at her, and cursed.
Because the last thing I wanted was to eliminate more ingredients, especially when almonds form a large part of my diet. Plus, I'm slightly hypoglycemic, so any kind of protein is very important to me. I can't have milk or soy, so we use almond milk. I use almond butter instead of peanut butter, and mix it into smoothies. I use ground almonds, and love pesto made with walnuts. My favorite granola is the "super nutty" variety. Almond butter on bananas was one of my favorite quick snacks.
Today I bought rice milk. I hate rice milk. I even hesitate to get the "multigrain" kind because of the wheat.

So, I've decided:
I never really liked Hack Mommy very much.
I like allergies even less.
If anyone has some second opinions that would prove Melissa horribly wrong and misguided, it would be super-appreciated right now. Because Lord knows, I don't respect her knowledge in other areas.
Argh.

carnival time!

I'm joining in a fun carnival of breastfeeding "expectation vs. reality" stories. Here's my take. Join in the carnival through the links at the bottom of this post.

In the days where I had a gigantic belly and lots of spare time, I had already become insistent about my right to breastfeed in public. “I don’t want to be isolated,” I said. So along with the Lasinoh and a How-to book, I bought a Hooter Hider in a garish print (so garish my husband called it “clown-like”). I’m not hiding behind basic black, I told myself. No one’s going to keep this nursing momma at home.

What I didn’t realize is that breastfeeding can be isolating, even in the best of circumstances. Perhaps the closeness nursing creates with your baby is the fact that it’s so hard to get close to anyone else.

Even physically. After about the first week of Lucy’s life, I realized no one had touched me. Because no one could get close enough. I was surrounded by pillows. Besides a Boppy, I needed about three other pillows to nurse comfortably sitting up on the couch. That number increased to six in bed, and ten lying down. I’m down to three pillows on the couch, and three in bed, but still. No one’s snuggling while Lucy’s latched on.

And despite my chutzpah, it took me weeks--well, months--to get used to nursing in public. It didn’t help that my husband was just the tiniest bit squeamish. Or that I wasn’t quite dexterous enough to lift up my shirt, help Lucy latch on, and keep the Hooter Hider from billowing like a garish kite. And that was when she wasn’t upset, arching her back, and unlatching unexpectedly.

And until I mastered nursing in a sling, I just couldn’t find comfortable places to sit. On our first outing, (to Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf), I brought the Boppy. It seemed perfectly normal after a few weeks of sleeplessness, but I wonder what people were thinking when they saw me march by with baby, diaper bag, and U-shaped pillow. Maybe they thought it was for some serious hemorrhoids.

For at least the first eight weeks, there wasn’t the possibility of going someplace and not nursing. We went out to dinner, and I nursed. I nursed in church. I nursed in the bathroom, on a walk, at my in-laws. In the library. At the park. In the car. Whether or not I had comfortable seating, or my arms were tired, or I had privacy, we nursed. Because that was our life.

And then we started recognizing that our daughter was sensitive to certain foods. Milk was obvious; I don’t usually eat it, but when I did after she was born, we were up all night. That’s easy, I thought. No more milk.

But her digestive system still seemed sensitive: I would describe the poops, but since this is for new moms, I’ll spare you the TMI details. I tried no wheat. This seemed to help. Then it was wine. Then soy.

If you don’t eat milk, wheat or soy, there’s not a lot you can eat. Actually, there’s plenty. There’s just not a lot of processesed food, restaurant food or other people’s food you can eat.

So now that our daughter stays up late enough for us to go out, and is mobile enough that we could eat at other people’s houses, we stay home. Oh, sure, I invite people over. And luckily, I get enough sleep these days that I have the energy to cook. I even like to cook.

But I miss dinners after church, or getting take-out when I’m too tired to cook. I miss not having to give people detailed instructions about what to bring over--scratch that; I miss telling people not to bother bringing anything, because it’s likely either they or I will miss something I can’t eat.

And yet--and yet, it isn’t all so bad as it sounds. My daughter smiles now; she plays games with us. She has started standing with support; we’re hoping she will crawl before she walks. She shakes her head back and forth when she’s delighted; she smiles at strangers, even when she’s tired. She crows when I tickle her ribs.

Social? No--breastfeeding isn’t exactly social. Yet it’s connective, like nothing else in the world.

Check out these other carnival rides:
Motherwear Blog - What I Didn't Expect When I Was Expecting
Breastfeeding Mums - What I Wish I'd Known About Breastfeeding
Mama Knows Breast - Top Ten Things I Didn't Expect About Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding 1-2-3 - What I Didn't Expect When I Was Expecting
The Lactivist - Nursing Isn't Quite What I Expected...
Spit Up On My Shoulder - Education is Key
Adventures of a Breastfeeding Mother - what she didn’t expect about breastfeeding
New Mama's Next - The Surprises of Breastfeeding an "Early Bird"
The True Face of Birth - What I Didn't Expect While Pregnant
Down With the Kids - Goodbye Booby