Dairy Free for T

If you know me you know that candy/chocolate/sugar and me go hand-in-hand. I love sugar. (But who doesn’t!?) 

The very first thing I asked for after giving birth to Tage was a big chocolate shake. I had two more after that. I didn’t want any food I just wanted my shake.

Tage came into this world screaming. He didn’t stop for a solid hour until he got food. Which was SO different from Brycen. Brycen was so calm and loving and snuggled. But I couldn’t get Tage to settle down for anything. He just wanted food.

Even after Tage got food he still screamed. He hardly ever slept and it was taking its toll on me completely. Instead of being happy because I had two beautiful healthy boys, I became so nervous and anxious. All I could think about was what I had done and did I really have two kids now. I was out of my mind! I was crying (along with my new baby) everyday, I was in pain (because I thought I could handle everything with simple Tylenol..... yeah I called back the next day and got the good stuff) and I was so lost.

Thankfully I had my mom come stay with me and help me out! The day after we got home from the hospital, he was still screaming alllllll the time, day and night. I was so mentally exhausted. My mom suggested that I cut out chocolate…..because some baby’s just can’t handle chocolate! So I did.... (a mother’s love... am I right!?) 

HARDEST THING EVER. (Jk it wasn’t bad but I craved chocolate so bad)

So two days after that, no chocolate, and things didn’t get better! Tage was still screaming all the time. I couldn’t make him happy, and it just seemed like he hated life! 

My mom asked if I had any chocolate, and my sleep deprived self started to bawl saying no and reciting everything I had eaten. As I finished telling her everything I had eaten it dawned on me that everything I had ate, involved cheese! We then both came to the conclusion that the problem was dairy and it needed to be cut from my diet.

Total. Game. Changer.

We were noticing more happy days instead of screaming, he was smiling, and we could console him when he was crying.

We had a normal baby! 

Now as for me... 

I am one of the pickiest eaters. I don’t like a lot of things, and textures bother me. So being dairy free was/is soooo hard. My diet consisted of eggs and oatmeal at first.

I don’t like almond or coconut or any other fake milk. I like 2% or whole milk. Cows milk. So basically cereal and anything milk wise was out.

I had a hard time figuring out what to eat and how to adjust my family to this new diet!

The first week was the worst.

I knew at that point that dairy was hurting my little baby, and I knew it was because I had been eating dairy! I honestly felt horrible. I blamed myself for hurting my child. (But how was I supposed to know if he cant talk?) I just felt horrible.

It didn’t help either when I would eat something I thought for sure had no dairy, but then realized (when my baby was screaming and inconsolable) that it in fact HAD dairy.

SO MANY THINGS HAVE DAIRY HIDDEN IN THE INGREDIENTS.

Like for instance, MCDONALDS FRENCH FRIES.

REALLY!?!? (come on McDonald’s)

Also, I know what you’re thinking… “Lyndsey just switch to soy formula!”

…..yeahhhhh lol… we tried that. He would forcibly vomit it all up with 30 minutes of eating! So formula wasn’t an option.

It was so hard to remember to look at the ingredients of every little thing before I put it in my mouth.

I stopped eating for a good 2 days because I was so scared of eating something that had hidden dairy in it, that I stopped eating everything all together. I just didn’t want to hurt my baby.

Fast forward two weeks and we finally got down the fact that if I wanted to make sure what I was eating didn’t contain dairy I had to cook.

Side note: I suck at cooking. I don’t like cooking. I don’t know how to cook. I have even started a fire in an apartment I lived in and almost burned the whole place down because I didn’t know that you couldn’t put water on an oil fire.

But I’m a mom who loves her baby. And like any other mom, we do anything for our babies. So I’ve learned to cook.

We now eat tilapia, salmon, eggs, oatmeal, French toast, pancakes, BLT’s, spaghetti, chicken, corndogs, hot dogs, hamburgers, and much more!

And occasionally we go to Wingers. (because their wings with the amazing sauce and steak fries are all dairy free and we could devour those every. Single. Day.)

Basically, if we could, we would eat there every day.

Going dairy free also helped me lose all of my baby weight within a month (yyaaayyy) but don’t let that fool you. I ran up my moms’ stairs this weekend and collapsed on the floor because I was so out of breath!

ANYWAYS.

We finally, at 4 months old, have the whole dairy free thing down. We don’t have any more slip-ups and my baby is happy every day!

I now joke and tell my step dad that I ended up with a dairy free baby because I made fun of him too much for being dairy free…… I have since stopped teasing him about being gluten free as well.. (;

I love my now happy fun little 4 monther, and I would give up eating anything if it kept him from hurting. Being a mom is so weird like that. But I love it. I wouldn’t trade being a mom to my two boys for anything.

Sincerely, me.