My experience with eczema and food allergies

Sawyer, age 2 1/2 months

I thought I would share my story of how I first went vegan, which is also the more important story of my son and our battle with food allergy related eczema.

3 months

Back in 2010, when my second son was just 2 months old, he started having really itchy skin. He was also sleeping horribly and I felt like his tummy was upset. He was always squirming in his crib and I just felt like something was wrong with him. I was exclusively breastfeeding, so I had no idea what to think or what to do.

Thankfully, when I made an appointment at his doctors office, I had to see a different doctor and she was the one who suggested that we do a blood test to test for allergies. (We no longer go to that office! :))

5 months

It was not a very fun experience to have blood drawn from a four month old, but he did well and the results were well worth it. He had an allergy to milk protein, egg whites and cat dander! I was eating greek yogurt, which is extremely high in milk protein almost everyday, eggs sometimes and we had two cats!

4 1/2 months

So, our journey began there. The first thing I did was go vegan. I had nursed my first son until 21 months and I was not about to give up on Sawyer at four months old. I had already been a vegetarian for over 12 years, so it was not that hard to take that extra step. I had thought about it before, although my eyes were open to just how many hidden animal products were in the foods I had been eating. I saw a dramatic improvement in his sleeping habits and demeanor within the first week. It made me quite upset actually to think that my milk was actually hurting him, but I came to terms with the fact that my breast milk was still the best thing for him with an allergy of this type.

6 months

We also met with an allergist. He explained the levels of the allergies. the cat dander was the lesser allergy and he said we should just not allow the cats into his room, which was easy to do. the milk allergy was by far the worst of the three, but was not a severe allergy. The allergist did not think that I would have to take dairy out of my diet completely, although I accepted the challenge. He thought I should be able to still bake with dairy, but I did not want to take the risk. He suggested that I go completely off the big dairy items, eggs, milk, cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt, etc. and slowly in a few months, I would be able to reintroduce those things to my diet. The short story is that Sawyer seemed more allergic than his numbers showed and I felt great and was loosing weight, so I continued being vegan until he was weaned at 16 months. That whole reintroducing cheese into my diet was a mistake, but I learned that dairy really does make me gain weight and feel crappy! Thats a whole other blog post in itself. So, back to my little man...

9 months

We started treating Sawyer with derma smoothe, which is fantastic when the eczema is all over his body. It is a peanut oil (not the type that causes allergies). You take a small spray bottle and spray water onto the skin and then rub in a bit of the oil. It was amazing. We did it twice daily for probably 6 months and then as needed. He was no longer itching and ripping his skin open and he slowly improved. Before using that, we found the only other thing that helped was hydrocortisone cream and aquafor. Anything else made him itch. This whole ordeal began my interest in reading ingredient labels. Aveeno hydrocortisone cream has tones of other perfumes and crap in it, and made him scream, for instance. Even some unscented   hypoallergenic organic baby products made him break out!

Sawyer turns 1

Sawyer, now, age 3

The only soap that I found I could use on him without him itching was and still is Kirks Cocoa Castile bar soap. My local Hannaford sells it, but you can buy it online as well. Check out their facebook page too. I recently found out they have a shampoo that I ordered off iherb.com which I highly recommend for ordering vegan products. I am so excited that finally at the age of 3 I found him a normal shampoo and conditioner that he does not react too.

My very first dress!

I am combining my old blog with my new one, and this is an older post that I wanted to keep on here.  It was my first dress that I made for my daughter, Lilly.

I'm not completely happy with it, but I did it. It helped me to learn more about my sewing machine and also how to think about a pattern. Here are some pics and my little cutie wearing it, unhemed.

Ridding my bathroom of non vegan products

Since I live with an omnivore partner and two omnivore children (our baby is vegan, so far), I decided to comb over the bathrooms first for animal products. The best way to start any potentially overwhelming project, is to start with a bit of research. Here are some sites that I found helpful.

Check out the app, Leaping Bunny, it provides you with an alphabetized list of companies and products which are free of animal products and cruelty. It has links to the companies websites as well. My favorite thing about this app is that you can tackle one type of prodect at a time.

The most helpful was PETA's lists of company's that do test on animals and don't test on animals. I was able to find 90% of the items very quickly. The rest of my items, mostly store brands are sitting in a box until I can do more research.

The easiest start was to take out all the big brands who use animals for testing. These were the tops brands in my cupboard.
- Johnson and Johnson
- Proctor & Gamble
- Dial
-Suave
- L'oreal

For PETA's list of companies who do and do not practice testing on animals, check here. http://www.peta.org/living/beauty-and-personal-care/companies/default.aspx

Here is what I took out of my bathroom


My closet is so much cleaner now. It feels better too! Now onto the upstairs bathroom.

What the heck do vegans eat?

Typical spinach salad for me with cut up vegan burger

Its funny to me that many people cannot contemplate a meal without meat or cheese. So many of our comfort foods are filled with animal flesh or animal products. It is hard to believe for the average omnivore, but you can make just as tasty comfort foods without the use of animal products and its by far healthier! Im not just eating vegan though, I am eating a produce rich diet. My main food are vegetables, but I also eat a variety of fruits, grains, nuts and seeds.






In researching on how to be a healthy vegan, I had some trouble finding a detailed yet understandable diet. Even in the vegan world, there are different theories on how you should eat. My main goal is to loose weight while being healthy and never gain the weight back. So, at this point, this is what I am doing and it seems to be working. Im loosing weight naturally. I feel great and more energized than I have felt in a long time.

This is a typical day for me lately, for food.

Bulgar fry, roasted root veggies , w/vegan cream cheese

-Coffee (I am addicted and not stopping, although Ive read good reasons to stop)
- Tofu scrabble, loaded with onions, peppers, tomatoes and more veggies, sometimes in a wrap loaded with baby spinach or lettuce.
- fresh carrots with scoop of home made hummus
- leftover dinner from the night before or big salad loaded with veggies, fat free dressing or balsamic vinegar and sesame seeds or sliced almonds
- filling meal I cook myself, like, vegan shepherds pie, hearty soup with homemade bread, tempeh with a vegetable sauté and grain.

zucchini stir fry with onions and mushrooms

I drink water! Occasionally,  I'll have a small juice or smoothie.

I try to buy all organic vegetables and grains. I do not snack on prepackaged food. I think before I eat. When I leave the house, I try to remember to bring my own snack or meal, so I don't have to worry when I'm out.

Here are my rules for myself that Ive come up with to not only be vegan, but to loose weight.
- do not eat animal products no matter how small.
- reduce sweets/ baking to once a month or less. (I love to bake)
- do not eat after 9pm and see if i can get it even earlier to 8 pm.
- eat fruit first thing in morning/ dont eat until hungry and start slowly.  Let my body warm up to food and tell me when to nurish it.
- eat less, if any at all of processed foods, less crackers, breads, spreads, other boxed foods.
- make more things from scratch

vegan cereal bars (I'll post this recipe soon!)

- half my plate at all meals should be fruits or veggies, if not more than half!
- Eat more salad! More greens!
- weigh in once a week on Wednesdays. Reassess if i have not lost weight.

Like I've said in other posts, I am still learning. I strive to improve my lifestyle everyday. There is more to being vegan than just food, but it starts there.

One of my favorite recipe sites : VegWeb
A new favorite blog with recipes : The Happy Herbivore

My mission for this year and the rest of my life

My name is Catherine, most people these days call me Cat.  I am about to turn 33 this month.  I have three kiddos, two boys ages 5 and 3(this month) and a baby girl who is almost five months now.  I have been a vegetarian since age 15 and the influence of dissecting the fetal pig, which I refused.  It took me a long time to come to the point I am now.  Its hard to know what you are doing food wise as a teenager.  I was a junk food vegetarian for a long time and my body shows that.  I am overweight and on a mission to look and feel better in all aspects of my life.

In photo: That is me, multitasking as always.  Sewing up a storm while enjoying my morning cup of coffee and entertaining my daughter who was next to me in her bouncer. 

This blog is to help me on my journey and possibly inspire and help others along their journeys.

I first tried to be vegan my first semester at college.  It was very hard eating on campus, and i had no idea what i was doing.  I basically cut out cheese and milk, thats it.  I have become a lot more awaresince having children, about what we, humans, put into our bodies and what we should be eating.  Im not a diet kind of person, but i have tried different ideas that are out there.  I had to go on a low fat diet while pregnant with my first son because I had horrible gallstone attacks.  It was awful and i was always hungry.  The plus was that i only gained 15 lbs during that pregnancy and by the time I was a week postpartum, I was back to pre pregnancy weight.  Although, the starvation mode I had been in caught up to me and I started eating everything after my gallbladder was removed.  I gained 30 pounds over the next few months.  By the time I got pregnant with my second son, I was up to 285 pounds, the most I had been in my whole life.  I ate well during pregnancy, vegetarian, but I made it up to 302 at nine months pregnant, which was tough, but I was nine months pregnant!  I was quickly down to pre pregnancy  weight again.  

When Sawyer was four months old we discovered he had an allergy to milk protein and egg whites.  Since I was exclusively breastfeeding, I had to go vegan for his health.  Sometime, I will post all about the difficulties I had with his eczema and how it turned me onto all natural solutions to clean
my home with.  I really owe a lot of my realizations to my son, Sawyer.  I hope that one day I can thank him for that and he appreciates it.  This was my first real attempt to go vegan.  I learned a lot.  I read labels and learned about ingredients I was unfamiliar with.  I started to cook with whole grains and make my own hummus.  I slowly over a year lost 20 pounds and then got pregnant with my baby girl.  During that year, once my son stopped breastfeeding, I slowly added cheese and eggs back into my diet.  I truly wish I had not.  In January 2012 I decided to go back to being vegan, but then I realized I was pregnant and I threw that idea right out.

Im not sure why I have gone back and forth, oh wait, I do, its called CHEESE!  I love the taste of cheese, but the more I read about factory farms and animal cruelty, I do not want to eat it.  There are so many tasty alternatives to cheese.  Although, I notice that the longer I go and remain vegan, the less I crave it.  They do add things to cheese to make it addictive!  Of course not all farmers do, but some.  Cows milk is meant for calfs, not human consumption.  More posts on that subject later.

So, here I am, going vegan for the final time at age 33, Mother of three.  Trying to not go crazy, help my family be safe, healthy and aware as well as continue to be artsy and crafty.

Me and my cutie pie, Lillian.