MSPI Journey #2

Our first baby was a crier. He cried for almost 5 months but do you know what made it worse? He hardly ever cried when we were out and about. We would go to the store, or grab a quick bite to eat, or to a family member's house and the kid was cool as a cucumber. The moment we would get home and the door would close, he would start. It was crazy. I was crazy. People told me repeatedly "he's such a good baby!" and I wanted to hand him over and run (or punch them in the nose).

I've come to learn that partly he was just  a crier. I recently learned about the "Period of Purple Crying"  which fits Mr E to a T. In addition, though, when one adds reflux, colic and MSPI to a baby who is already crying you have a recipe for disaster. I tried fairly unsuccessfully to start on the MSPI diet. I learned that it takes 30 days to clear dairy and soy from your system. I learned that 30 more days of a crying baby with a stomach ache seems like an eternity. I learned that trying to read the labels to sort out if a product contains dairy or soy is like detective work. I learned that trying to do detective work while sleep deprived leads to failure. So, I pumped, I nursed (another sad story for another day) and finally about 3 months in, my husband (who deserves sainthood) said "enough, I gave him a bottle of formula, we are done with this". I was relieved. He made the call that I couldn't but should have.

We tried several formulas and ended up on Alimentum by Similac. It was expensive and lasted us about 2 1/2 to 3 days and I would have paid twice that when he finally slept for more than 2 hours at a time. Sigh. I continued to try and maintain the MSPI diet and pump but finally at about 5 months I weaned off of that. I was too afraid to try and give him the pumped milk and the freezer was overflowing.

I haven't been able to find empirical data on second babies having MSPI if the first one did but seems to me that testimonials would say that this is the case about 70% of the time. This is scary. However, being somewhat more prepared this time around is in my favor. Today I started in on the MSPI diet. I am 6 weeks from my due date and I decided to start at least 30 days in advance to let the proteins clear my system. E was 2 weeks early and so I didn't want to take any chances. I have begun to fill my deep freeze with MSPI "safe" meals as well as scout out brands/products that I can have. The idea is that in a sleep deprived state I will be less concerned with reading labels as I will have some products in my head that I know are safe. I have put countless hours into reading about dairy and soy protein intolerance, safe and not safe products, levels of reaction, and have thought long and hard about what I would like my plan to be. In the next post, I will try and lay out the plan I have in my head and then as I go along this crazy journey, I am hoping to write some posts about what I am eating, what I am buying and how it is working. When I was trying to do this with my first I kept running into walls. I needed someone to give me 2 or 3 breakfast ideas, 2 or 3 lunch ideas, snacks, etc but I never really found this  anywhere.

If this helps one momma who is struggling to get through the day, then it was worth every second because I was that mom at one point.

So as of today... let the journey begin.