I'd like to hear some opinions about the value of doing an elimination diet during the newborn period for the nursing mother. I ask because with my first child, she turned out to be gluten intolerant, which we didn't discover until she was two and a half, after two and a half years of scarringly terrible sleep and consequent unhappiness. There wasn't anything so dramatic as bloody stool or a rash or anything that a doctor would point to to suggest allergy testing--just that she got hyper when she should have gotten tired. We only found out because my doctor suggested an elimination diet for ME, which didn't really turn up anything conclusive for me but had a rather dramatic effect on her.
So I thought, if the next one's going to have some food sensitivity, I'd much rather know about it as soon as possible, you know? Had I known the first time, we could have avoided so much misery and who knows what damage to my daughter's well-being otherwise. It would absolutely have been worth the stress and bother of an elimination diet. So why not eliminate the main allergens from the outset and then introduce them mindfully next time?
But then I look up the idea online, and everyone's saying, oh, mama's diet hardly ever makes a difference, why go through the hassle and risk bad nutrition (because apparently if you don't eat a Standard American Diet complete with milk and wheat and random industrial soy and a lot of other things plenty of cultures never eat anyway, you're in danger of malnutrition, you know). But in my mom's group, I know a good percentage of the kids actually ended up having reactions to stuff in mom's milk, sometimes very serious, and I'm wondering if this is something where research is still behind the curve of a developing trend, or what? Certainly no one in my or my husband's family before had a food allergy or sensitivity that they knew about, and now here we are.
I'm rambling, just my thoughts, but has anyone tried this? Did anyone end up actually uncovering a sensitivity? What are your thoughts on pros and cons?
So I thought, if the next one's going to have some food sensitivity, I'd much rather know about it as soon as possible, you know? Had I known the first time, we could have avoided so much misery and who knows what damage to my daughter's well-being otherwise. It would absolutely have been worth the stress and bother of an elimination diet. So why not eliminate the main allergens from the outset and then introduce them mindfully next time?
But then I look up the idea online, and everyone's saying, oh, mama's diet hardly ever makes a difference, why go through the hassle and risk bad nutrition (because apparently if you don't eat a Standard American Diet complete with milk and wheat and random industrial soy and a lot of other things plenty of cultures never eat anyway, you're in danger of malnutrition, you know). But in my mom's group, I know a good percentage of the kids actually ended up having reactions to stuff in mom's milk, sometimes very serious, and I'm wondering if this is something where research is still behind the curve of a developing trend, or what? Certainly no one in my or my husband's family before had a food allergy or sensitivity that they knew about, and now here we are.
I'm rambling, just my thoughts, but has anyone tried this? Did anyone end up actually uncovering a sensitivity? What are your thoughts on pros and cons?
