Giving dairy the boot

I think Kiku has a sensitivity to dairy products.  I've had a hunch about this for a while now, and remember talking to her pediatrician about it when she was around 18 months old.  The doc said that a dairy allergy was unlikely because she wasn't exhibiting any of the usual symptoms, like a red ring around her bottom, or rashes on her face.  But today something interesting happened.  Kiku was in a great mood all morning, until she ate some yogurt during snack time.  About ten minutes later, Dr. Jekyll turned into Mr. Hyde.  It was like a switch was flipped and suddenly she was acting uncooperative, defiant, and irritable.  This has happened before, so many times before, but I'd never been able to attribute it to a specific food until today.  A light bulb finally came on in my head.

I've always felt like Kiku's personality changed when she turned one, which is when we introduced cows milk.  Since then she's become more serious and moody, and I've always had a sneaking suspicion that dairy was the culprit.  I know I should've listened to my gut and not dismissed the idea solely based on the opinion of her pediatrician. 

I've been doing some research on food sensitivities and she has many of the symptoms, like frequent ear infections, stuffiness, mood swings, irritability, hyperactivity, loud breathing during sleep, and the list goes on.  I suspect that sugar might also be partially responsible, so we're going to cut that down (or out altogether) as well.

As of tomorrow, Kiku is going to stop consuming dairy products for 21 days.  It's going to be a challenge to find alternatives, but I'm determined to make this happen.  If nothings changed after three weeks, then we'll cut out sugar and see how things go. 

Comments

[Lesley]

How did your no-dairy experiment ever turn out? I am curious because my kiddo was sensitive to dairy in my diet when he was a wee infant and now that he is 12 months old, I am trying to figure out if dairy in his diet is a problem for him or not (no milk yet, but he has had yogurt and cheese). I would love to hear what you have learned with your daughter.

[Lesley]

How did your no-dairy experiment ever turn out? I am curious because my kiddo was sensitive to dairy in my diet when he was a wee infant and now that he is 12 months old, I am trying to figure out if dairy in his diet is a problem for him or not (no milk yet, but he has had yogurt and cheese). I would love to hear what you have learned with your daughter.

[Dayjamas]

Lesley,
We took dairy out of her diet completely for about three months and she stopped getting ear infections. Although she's still drinking soy milk instead of cows milk, we decided to slowly re-introduced cheese and yogurt because she's such a picky eater and the choices had become so limited. So far so good, as she now eats lots of cheese and yogurt and the ear infections haven't returned.

One thing we discovered is that she's very sensitive to sugar, and this seems to be responsible for a lot of the behavior issues I wrote about in the post. We try to keep her diet low in sugar but it's a huge challenge, esp. at preschool, birthday parties, etc. Her personality can change dramatically after eating one cupcake!