Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Henry's Allergies


Henry’s been having a really rough time ever since I started weaning him to a sippy cup of milk. He refuses to drink milk and will only drink water from the sippy. For about two weeks he would just cry and cry and cry pull at my shirt and lay his head on me. He was the saddest boy ever! Really, it was heart-breakingly sad. But he’s been doing better for a while….but only drinking water, which is not good. Because he wasn’t getting calcium from milk, I’d been pushing tons of string cheese and yogurt to get some dairy in his diet. Henry was grumpy and sad and whiny a lot, and we couldn’t figure out why. I thought all the time that maybe he was on the verge of getting sick but he never did. He’s also been having super, super rough skin all over his entire body. We’d slather him with lotion and it never helped, not one bit.

I took him to his 1 year doctor appointment in January and he had lost weight since his 9 month appointment. Yikes! So they wanted me to try to get him drinking something caloric. I told the doctor I thought maybe he’d developed an allergy to his bodywash, since this rash was all over his body. She also prescribed me a steroid oil lotion but it didn’t seem to help his skin at all. He was scratching at his body all the time, especially his scalp. He got a cold a week or so later, but he seemed to be getting over it just fine. One night towards the tail end of his cold I had dreams all night long that I took Henry to see his doctor. It was like the same dream over and over and over all night long. So I woke up the next morning and made him a doctor appointment for that day. Henry’s doctor wasn’t in so we saw a different doctor. The moment she sat down and looked at his skin she looked up at me and said, “this looks like a milk allergy to me.” It had never even occurred to me that it might be a milk allergy! (I had been off dairy almost entirely while I was nursing because I know Henry was sensitive to it when he was a newborn but I thought he had likely grown out of it.)

So long story short – we took Henry off milk for a 2 week trial and his skin was almost 100% better! He still won’t drink almond milk very well, but he’ll eat lots of soy yogurt and almond yogurt, and he eats rice cheese sticks to get his calcium.

The dream I had about taking Henry to the doctor was another testament to me that Heavenly Father knows each of us and loves us. He knew we needed to see that doctor that day so she could help him get better. Heavenly Father hears and answers our prayers!


1 comment:

Jessica Bath said...

So glad you were inspired! Sorry you had to go through such a long period of time before you were able to figure it out. Were in the same boat with our Pup Penny, no fun =/