Hellobee Boards

@abbydabbydoodlebug: What do you order at CFA? It seems like everything has milk and soy!

@ellewoods84: I repeat a lot, but luckily my husband is a creature of habit so he doesn't mind at all. During the school year when I'm working, I only cook 2-3 times a week and we eat leftovers. So I cook one thing Sunday and we also eat it Monday. I cook something else Tuesday and we also eat it Wednesday, etc. Then on weekends I tend to make big breakfasts/brunches and then for dinner we eat no-cook things like hummus and pita/cereal/sandwiches/etc.

My husband is south asian and we tend towards the spicier foods. I made a thai curry in the crock pot at least once a week--it's super easy. I tend to make at least once chicken curry (but I use a bought curry sauce, I have a few I can recommend that are MSPI friendly). I have a good vegetarian curried lentil recipe I can share. I make pasta pretty often (again, I can recommend some MSPI friendly jar sauces). And then sometimes I do something like make turkey burgers, or I make salmon with two veggie sides, or another white fish.

Then very occasionally I make something like a bbq beef brisket which we can eat for days, or spicy chicken sausage with veg sides, etc.

I'll post some of my recipes. I don't make anything that is difficult. I just don't have time when I'm working and DH doesn't get home till 7-8 pm, so I have to prepare LOs dinner, feed her, and get her ready for bed while I make dinner--all solo.

Also.....you guys with younger babies aren't going to want to hear this....

But it's good to get some solid food options that are MSPI friendly under your belt now, because when your baby starts eating solids, they also won't be able to eat any "typical' baby-toddler foods like yogurt, cheese, a lot of bought toddler foods, etc.

So in a way, this diet for yourself is preparation for the food you will have to make your LO one day. I mean, you might be lucky and they may outgrow it sooner rather than later, but my LO is 13 months and still MSPI sensitive. My husband has still been eating some dairy all along, but my and Miss M basically eat the same things now.

Go to meals for me:

tilapia/chicken with veggie sides. Often a microwaveable steam-in-bag frozen veg
chopped salad with protein of choice (this varies...chicken, veggie burgers, beans, eggs, sometimes steak)
spaghetti with sauce (we do homemade sauce. I make a big batch and use it all month)
Also pasta with roasted veggies and extra garlic
eggs with spinach and hash browns (using frozen shredded potatoes)
fried eggs over toast with avocado and salsa
homemade burgers with sweet potato fries (I've skipped the bun bc I don't have a good soy-free option)
Also Chipotle.

We had an appointment with the regular pediatrician yesterday (initial appointment was with another doctor in the practice). First off, I'm pretty sure the scale was off by nearly a pound which makes it seem like he has gained almost a pound and a half in 2 weeks when it is more like a half a pound. The doctor totally dismissed my concern over the scale. Second, he seemed to think it was a reflux issue, not MSPI, and suggested we try spoon feeding rice cereal once a day. The reason he is thinking reflux is that recently DS has started spitting up a lot, sometimes projectile when he burps, and he often fights me when I try to feed him by arching his back and crying. He thinks the blood in the poop is from a small cut that most definitely was not there when his first diaper tested positive for blood. He did say to stay off the dairy, soy, wheat since I did initially see some improvement but it's probably not the problem.
Honestly, I don't know that it is reflux. Today diapers are finally looking normal after whatever bad thing I ate last week and he is nursing fine for the most part and spitting up less. I am reluctant to give cereal so early if it's not necessary. What would you ladies do? I'm thinking of just seeing how things go over the next couple days and calling the doctor?

I have 4 cans of Neocate we don't need. Actually, I think it's 5. I'm looking to sell if for $30 a can plus shipping if anyone wants it.

@gilmoregirl: That's great that your LO is doing better! The first 2 weeks are the worst. The diet gets so much easier after that! I still had pangs of cravings, but didn't last long. Keep it up mama, you're doing great!

@gilmoregirl: I read somewhere that it can take 2-4 weeks for dairy to leave your system and another 2-4 to leave your LO's system, so that could be what is happening.

I guess I should update on my dairy testing! I didn't want to write anything too early and jinx myself, lol. So I splurged and got Ben and Jerry's ice cream and ate it 3 days in a row and nothing major happened! The only little thing that I have noticed is yesterday and this morning she has 3-4 little red dots on her girl parts that wasn't there before. She's had pretty soaking wet diapers when she wakes up though, so I'm not sure what it's from. I'm going to keep putting cream on it and keeping and eye on it to make sure it doesn't get worse.

My next step is going to be butter, straight milk, and soy.

Also, I found out that Culver's has a pretty good allergy grid! I'm not 100% sure what kind of oil they use to fry in, but they have a few things that are d/s free!

@fussygal: Thank you! I feel sort of bad posting in here about what dairy I've eaten because I don't want to make anyone jealous, if that makes sense! But I feel like if I heard someone that could have dairy at 6 months when I was in the midst of the diet, I'd have some hope! Some light at the end of the tunnel. I'm still going to try to eat dairy lightly, just because I think it'll be healthier for all of us. I was a dairy fiend before.

I feel so lucky that she outgrew this at 6 months. I can finally eat at my friend's houses without bringing my own food or making them adhere to my diet. I have a little bit of freedom again!

Best of luck to all of you and I really hope all your babies are thriving and happy because of this. One day they will thank us for our sacrifices.

@Mae: You might have seen this already, but this map was helpful when I was considering formula:

http://www.neocate.com/reimbursement/insurance-coverage-map/

Really glad to hear Fiona's improving. I can't imagine how stressed you must have been (/still be).
My #1 reason for working on this via diet is that we can't get the cost of formula covered by my insurance and it's extra-expensive to get the hypo-allergenic stuff. I took a semester off from my job, so there's zero wiggle room in our budget right now. I think we'll need to reevaluate when I go back to work, but I'm really hopeful he might have grown out of it by then.

We definitely haven't had all of the complications you have, but I really struggled with feeling forced into it, especially when we weren't seeing results. I'm also hyervigilant about what I eat to the point of being obsessive, and I feel like it's taking a toll. I will not eat ANYTHING unless I can read a label or make it myself, which has been limiting when we want to go places or do things.

I miss cheese and greek yogurt. Everything else has honestly been easy to give up or replace. It turns out I like coconut creamer probably even more than half and half. Oh, and buying expensive bread is getting old. I wish I could quit bread, but I can't haha.

I just figured out that for the amount of time I spend pumping, the amount I get, and the amount nutramigen costs... I'm saving approximately $1.85 per hour of pumping. That is really not seeming worth it lol.

@LovelyPlum: I eliminated more than dairy and soy but I have to admit, I did it sort of ad hoc (I was using a food diary and just followed my gut a bit). I am pretty certain that I eliminated way more than I really needed to though. In our case, she seemed fine but her stool kept coming back positive for blood, which is why I kept on eliminating things. I can tell you what my pediatrician said though, which is that normally when milk/soy aren't enough to eliminate, she would suggest: wheat (gluten), eggs, and beef (I think in that order). Hope that helps!

@catlady: my diet change is still pretty new but I have to say I miss some wheat based things like bread and pasta and pizza. I don't even care if the pizza has cheese! Alsi miss being able to go out to eat or to other people's houses without starving. I don't really miss most of the soy or dairy except ice cream on the rare occasions we have it.

@LovelyPlum: Thanksgiving was when we realized that our older one had an issue. For Christmas I think we just pulled out all the things I could eat before anything was added. So I ate salad and squash, sweet potato. I don't eat turkey or stuffing anyway and I don't really remember what else we had. For dessert I made pumpkin pie using coconut oil for crust and almond milk in the filking. It was yummy!
As far as figuring out the issue, I guess we are still figuring it out. It's been only 3 weeks since I changed my diet. I noticed almost immediate improvement in his appetite/willingness to nurse and then poop started to look more normal. I had some pasta and poop turned green again temporarily and did the same when I had some bread and more pasta so I suspected wheat as well. Then after nearly a week and a half of improvement we were righr back at square one. No clue what happened but whatever it was, we have been much better the last few days. I got rid of all tge processed foods it potentially could have been and basically started over. I am very leary of eating out or eating anything I don't prepare. If everything seems ok over the next couple weeks I will try reintroducing some things after his 4 month check up. With my older ds, I wonder if we discovered everything he couldn't tolerate because he always was about nursing and continued to have mucusy poops and was a very slow gainer. Eliminating dairy and soy helped a lot with his sleep and gassiness and up until he was 9 months it was obvious by his behavior if I had any. He would just get kind of fussy and had a lot of trouble sleeping.

Ok I have already typed a novel but quick update - I thought DS was starting to improve when the doc suggested cereal so we decided to hold off and in the last few days we've had a different baby. Nursing much better, smiling and laughing all day, normal yellow poop, and soooo much less spit up. Still not sleeping great and there are still spots of blood but the could also be from a small cut or something. Hope this good streak continues. We are going on vacation soon so that will be a challenge.

Hi Ladies!!

Just wanted to pop in real quick to say.....well, that I am a "graduate" of the MSPI club I guess because my LO is 13.5 months and as of this week, I have officially stopped pumping. My LO is now on 100% hemp milk (she took forrreeevvverrrr to transition), although I have a few frozen bags of BM left that I am slowly using up.

I stuck to the MSPI diet from 3 months-13.5 months and there is a light at the end of the tunnel, I promise! The first three months were by far the hardest--and as some of you just mentioned, those three months happened to also coincide with Thanksgiving and Christmas. That meant a lot of traveling, a lot of scrounging for safe foods--and for the first time in my life, I had to pre-plan and pre-bake foods to take with me on the road, since I was too wary of eating random food in random places.

In the past 10.5 months, I have been "that girl" who has brought her own food to every party, who has taken over the kitchen at every place I've visited to prepare my own safe foods, who has stopped eating out (almost) entirely, who turned down every single morsel of birthday cake at work, work lunches, work celebrations. I have carried my own salad dressing in my purse. I have packed my own snacks to eat at Happy Hours so I wouldn't feel jealous when my friends were eating delicious bar foods. You would think I would have lost weight, but as it turns out, I have a super power for finding "safe" junk foods and I ended up actually gaining 5 lbs. Boo. Also, coconut products are both delicious and extremely fattening.

I have nothing against formula, and honestly around 6 months I would have loved to give up EPing and get my baby on Neocate, but she just never would take it. But it's okay, because now I can look at her and think, I made her! I made her, carried her in the womb, and my boobs fed her, and I sacrificed my butter and cheese for her and now she's 13.5 months old and she's amazing and doing well!

As for LO, she is nowhere close to growing out of it. She grabbed another baby's cheese puff at a playdate last week and ate half of it before I fished the rest out of her mouth, and she had black tarry stool for a day, then the green slimy poops for a few days before going back to normal. So it seems we are still a long way off from her growing out of this. This far down the line though, I feel a lot more equipped to handle her "diet".

She can't eat yogurt or cheese or mac n cheese or most processed foods and I think it's made me feed her healthier foods, because I am extremely lazy and probably would have resorted to convenience foods a lot by now if it weren't for MSPI, so in a lot of ways, this has been a blessing for us. Her favorite foods at the moment are salmon, green peas, lima beans, blueberries, strawberries, broccoli, cauliflower, and rotisserie chicken.

Just wanted to give you an idea of how it may end up further down the line, for those of you with more sensitive babies. HUGS and hang in there!

@Anagram: yay congrats!!! Good work mama!

@Anagram: Congrats!! What an accomplishment! We can be graduates together. Hopefully some more of you aren't far behind! You are all doing an amazing job taking care of your babes.

@LovelyPlum: @Mae: @abbydabbydoodlebug: thanks girls! @catlady: I asked my doctor about how much and she said 16 oz a day is fine...my LO tends to just hit 14 oz a day since we have been struggling with the straw cup transition as well.

@skipra: well, in our case both cows milk and soy milk are out, since LO has an intolerance to both. Of the remaining milk alternatives, I did my own research and found that hemp milk was the closest to cows milk in terms of calories, fats, sugars, and protein. http://www.noshtopia.com/2008/05/nutrition-compa.html