I don't post much here, but thought I'd throw out what's going on now to maybe help someone else 
DD started reacting to dairy in January/February of 2009, when she was 15 months old. She was a colicky baby but I'd always just assumed it was how she was and not tried to remove milk. When we removed milk from just her diet (not mine) her sleep improved DRASTICALLY and a chronic diaper rash cleared up after about a month of being dairy free. I was pregnant at the time and had no milk supply to speak of, so all food trials were done with her alone though she did continue to nurse. Over the next year, she would randomly start reacting to foods. Her symptoms were face flush, tummy ache/poor sleep, and her poop was never formed, ever, and was almost always full of undigested food. D/T the poop, we always assumed we were still missing *something* though we couldn't identify it. She lost food after food. When we thought we'd figured it out, she would start reacting to something new. When YDD was born and my milk came back in, ODD got worse, so I cut dairy as well. She got a little better, but was still not sleeping well and not having solid poops. By December, she had lost dairy, soy, corn, blueberries, tomatoes, pineapple, and chickpeas. We had her tested for celiac and she got a high IgG response but follow-up testing showed that she doesn't carry the gene. With those test results and pretty much at our wits end, she went on a TED. She did great. Clear skin on her face and butt, sleeping fantastically, mood improvement (which we didn't realize was a problem), and solid poop. She was on it for a couple of weeks when we did our first trial ~ peanut butter. Fail. Eggs ~ fail. Apples ~ fail. Grapes ~ fail. These were all foods she had been eating forever, so I was disappointed and frustrated. Ground beef and carrots passed. We tried eggs a second time after 2 months (so in February of this year) and she had a pretty strong and clear reaction. Face rash much worse than before, horrible sleep, she was clearly in pain, whiny and not paying attention for 3 days. Her poop was also awful ~ blackish, greasy, gritty. And after that trial, she never went back to baseline. We tried cutting pears, thinking she was getting too much fruit, but it didn't help.
Two weeks ago, I basically gave up. It had been over a year and she was no better off (and arguably worse off) than she had been to start with. We went with full-fledged, no-holds-barred reintroduction. We let her eat EVERYTHING she wanted. Dairy, soy, corn, nuts, peanut butter, etc. My thought was that she would get clearly worse and it would give DH and I renewed vigor to go at the food issues again. But she didn't get worse. She got better. Her poop solidified. She was digesting things. Her mood improved. Her sleep has been pretty fantastic.
So then I started to piece it all together. When we started the reintroduction, we also happened to start her on a really strong probiotic because she had had bronchitis and had taken a z-pack, and I was worried about thrush. I thought, could the probiotic really be helping her? I've looked into it more, and it seems that it can! And then it all hit me ~ when this all started last year, I had assumed the reactions were d/t her interest in solids from my dwindling milk supply. But looking at the calendar, I see that at the same time she started reacting, she had just recently taken amoxicillin for the first time ever for bronchitis (apparently she is prone to it). My theory is that her gut was messed up from the abx (which we should have known, as she got a pretty bad yeast rash from them that required an rx to clear up), and along with what was likely a dairy intolerance that she'd had since birth, her gut couldn't heal. The probiotics have done wonders! I am so amazed. She doesn't wake up crying anymore in the middle of the night. I'm not kidding when I say that she is a DIFFERENT KID.
She does still get gassy if she has too much dairy, but otherwise she can eat whatever she wants.
DD started reacting to dairy in January/February of 2009, when she was 15 months old. She was a colicky baby but I'd always just assumed it was how she was and not tried to remove milk. When we removed milk from just her diet (not mine) her sleep improved DRASTICALLY and a chronic diaper rash cleared up after about a month of being dairy free. I was pregnant at the time and had no milk supply to speak of, so all food trials were done with her alone though she did continue to nurse. Over the next year, she would randomly start reacting to foods. Her symptoms were face flush, tummy ache/poor sleep, and her poop was never formed, ever, and was almost always full of undigested food. D/T the poop, we always assumed we were still missing *something* though we couldn't identify it. She lost food after food. When we thought we'd figured it out, she would start reacting to something new. When YDD was born and my milk came back in, ODD got worse, so I cut dairy as well. She got a little better, but was still not sleeping well and not having solid poops. By December, she had lost dairy, soy, corn, blueberries, tomatoes, pineapple, and chickpeas. We had her tested for celiac and she got a high IgG response but follow-up testing showed that she doesn't carry the gene. With those test results and pretty much at our wits end, she went on a TED. She did great. Clear skin on her face and butt, sleeping fantastically, mood improvement (which we didn't realize was a problem), and solid poop. She was on it for a couple of weeks when we did our first trial ~ peanut butter. Fail. Eggs ~ fail. Apples ~ fail. Grapes ~ fail. These were all foods she had been eating forever, so I was disappointed and frustrated. Ground beef and carrots passed. We tried eggs a second time after 2 months (so in February of this year) and she had a pretty strong and clear reaction. Face rash much worse than before, horrible sleep, she was clearly in pain, whiny and not paying attention for 3 days. Her poop was also awful ~ blackish, greasy, gritty. And after that trial, she never went back to baseline. We tried cutting pears, thinking she was getting too much fruit, but it didn't help.
Two weeks ago, I basically gave up. It had been over a year and she was no better off (and arguably worse off) than she had been to start with. We went with full-fledged, no-holds-barred reintroduction. We let her eat EVERYTHING she wanted. Dairy, soy, corn, nuts, peanut butter, etc. My thought was that she would get clearly worse and it would give DH and I renewed vigor to go at the food issues again. But she didn't get worse. She got better. Her poop solidified. She was digesting things. Her mood improved. Her sleep has been pretty fantastic.
So then I started to piece it all together. When we started the reintroduction, we also happened to start her on a really strong probiotic because she had had bronchitis and had taken a z-pack, and I was worried about thrush. I thought, could the probiotic really be helping her? I've looked into it more, and it seems that it can! And then it all hit me ~ when this all started last year, I had assumed the reactions were d/t her interest in solids from my dwindling milk supply. But looking at the calendar, I see that at the same time she started reacting, she had just recently taken amoxicillin for the first time ever for bronchitis (apparently she is prone to it). My theory is that her gut was messed up from the abx (which we should have known, as she got a pretty bad yeast rash from them that required an rx to clear up), and along with what was likely a dairy intolerance that she'd had since birth, her gut couldn't heal. The probiotics have done wonders! I am so amazed. She doesn't wake up crying anymore in the middle of the night. I'm not kidding when I say that she is a DIFFERENT KID.
She does still get gassy if she has too much dairy, but otherwise she can eat whatever she wants.
) but we did the probiotics at the same time. We also had no abx during labor.
xxx
