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| 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.
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| 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! :))
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| 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...
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| 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!
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| Sawyer turns 1 |
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| 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.
