Dur­ing the time I was eat­ing dairy free, I found out just how impor­tant meal plan­ning was.  If I planned my meals, most of the time I was sat­is­fied, healthy, and con­tent as far as food was con­cerned.  When I didn’t and tried to wing it, I ended up unhappy, hun­gry, and gen­er­ally miss­ing some sort of hid­den dairy.  That also meant I ended up with an unhappy baby.  It was not worth it.

Since I wrote about eat­ing dairy free, I have been notic­ing that many of the search results that lead to peo­ple find­ing my blogs are those related to dairy free eat­ing while breast­feed­ing.  Because of that, I decided to com­pile some food and meal ideas here in one post.  So, here it is a sam­ple meal plan of what we might have eaten in a week while I was dairy free:

Sun­day:

• Break­fast — Steel cut oats with apple and cin­na­mon and a lit­tle brown sugar (You could use a sprin­kle of brown sugar and some almond milk or rice milk, too, if you want.)
• Lunch — Tor­tilla wrap with peanut but­ter, honey, and banana
• Sup­per — Spaghetti (Every­one else ate cheese, I did not)

Mon­day:

• Break­fast — Smoothie (Rice milk, banana, frozen of fresh fruit, honey if you like it a bit sweeter, and if you are look­ing to add pro­tein; tofu)
• Lunch — Black bean soup
• Sup­per — Stir fry (Before I stopped eat­ing meat, we would throw chicken, broc­coli, beans, peas, car­rots, and cau­li­flower into our wok.  Now, we would skip the chicken and use chick­peas instead.)  Some­times I used this recipe, but some­times I just used Kikko­man Soy Sauce to fla­vor it.

Tues­day:

• Break­fast– Peanut but­ter and jelly toast (Made with home­made bread — If you’re very care­ful you can find bread at the store with no dairy.  Another option would be to look for bread at your local bak­ery or nat­ural food store.)
• Lunch — Taco salad (No cheese or sour cream) — Let­tuce, taco meat (if you eat meat), toma­toes, black beans, salsa
• Sup­per — Beef Stuffed Peppers

Wednes­day:

• Break­fast — Scram­bled eggs with salsa
• Lunch -   Spinach Straw­berry Salad
• Sup­per — Slow Cooker Chicken Taco Soup

Thurs­day:

• Break­fast– Morn­ing Glory Muffins I didn’t have apple but­ter, so I used apple­sauce.  I’m not sure if that’s a great sub­sti­tu­tion or not, but the muffins turned out well.
• Lunch — Lentils and rice with fried onions
• Sup­per — Hum­mus pizza (with no cheese in my part, but chopped toma­toes over the top to keep the other veg­eta­bles moist)

Fri­day:

• Break­fast– Smoothie (Almond or rice milk, banana, honey, and peanut butter)
• Lunch — Span­ish rice
• Sup­per — Corn flake chicken — Chicken dipped in rice milk and cov­ered in crushed corn flakes

Sat­ur­day:

• Bunch — French toast (use almond or rice milk instead of cow’s milk) and eggs, sausage, or bacon
• Sup­per — BBQ Chicken in the crockpot

Snacks:

Fruit Salsa with cin­na­mon chips

Nuts

Dried fruit

Nuts and dried fruit together to make trail mix

Hum­mus (I used chick­peas instead of black beans) for crack­ers or vegetables

Fresh fruit or vegetables

Apples (or apple sauce) with cinnamon

Desserts: (The desserts required some substitutions)

Hershey’s Choco­late Cake — Sub­sti­tute almond or rice milk for the cow’s milk in the cake and frost­ing.  For the frost­ing, you can use a soy mar­garine.  If you pre­fer not to do that, you can melt dairy free choco­late chips in a dou­ble boiler and use that to driz­zle over the cake.

Apple Cake

Triple Berry Sorbet

I hope this helps, and check out my other posts on breast­feed­ing while eat­ing dairy free.  Also, if you have ques­tions, leave me a com­ment.  It’s hard get­ting started, but it’s easy once you get going.  It’s also so worth it.

Since A is now one, I guess I am now offi­cially an extended, tan­dem nurser! Woohoo! K is two and will be three in Novem­ber and still nurs­ing. I recently had some­one ask me how I decided to nurse him for so long. Really, it wasn’t a one time deci­sion that I made. It was sev­eral smaller deci­sions made along the way. Many peo­ple decide to stop nurs­ing at twelve months and are sur­prised when I tell them I don’t plan to wean A any time soon. Those same peo­ple are gen­er­ally even more sur­prised to find out that not only will I not wean A soon, K is still nurs­ing, too. :

Since I decided to put a link to my web­site in my Face­book page, I thought now is as good a time as any to answer some of those ques­tions. I don’t feel like I need to defend my deci­sion, and I’m not try­ing to tell any­one else what they should do for their fam­ily. I sim­ply like to talk about breast­feed­ing and other par­ent­ing issues. Thus, I have a blog pretty much ded­i­cated to doing just that!

When K was born, I had my share of strug­gles learn­ing to nurse him. He was early. He needed a shield to latch. He didn’t latch for the first sev­eral days of life. He had jaun­dice. He was a sleepy baby. I am sure there are a cou­ple oth­ers I could list, but luck­ily, those first weeks have faded a lit­tle in my mem­ory and now I remem­ber them mostly with rose col­ored glasses. My first goal was to nurse him for 6 weeks. Once I made that goal, my next goal became three months. Once I made that goal, I decided to go big and made my goal twelve months. Well, by the time K was a year old, I was preg­nant with A. I knew that sta­tis­ti­cally most babies will wean dur­ing a mother’s preg­nancy. I also knew that K still depended on nurs­ing for com­fort and nutri­tion through­out the day and some­times through the night, too. I fig­ured that since 70% of babies wean dur­ing a mother’s preg­nancy, he would too, and I would let him decide when that time was instead of decid­ing for him.

Well, as my preg­nancy pro­gressed, K still seemed to need “mommy milk” in a very real way that wasn’t met in any other man­ner. I can’t say that nurs­ing while preg­nant was the eas­i­est thing I have ever done or the most com­fort­able. How­ever, it was some­thing I did for K because he needed, wanted, and liked it

K was 20.5 months old when A was born. At that point, being able to nurse both K and A was a tremen­dous help in the tran­si­tion from one child to two. K was still very young and still needed a lot of mommy time. Because of that, I decided to allow him to con­tinue nurs­ing on demand. I felt as though choos­ing to have A was a deci­sion that Jason and I made. K had no part in that deci­sion, so I didn’t think that hav­ing A should be the rea­son he was no longer able to nurse. At that point, it became my goal to allow K to choose his own date for wean­ing. I reserve the right to change my mind in the case of any unforseen cir­cum­stances, but at this point, I hope to achieve child-led weaning.

Now, I am cur­rently nurs­ing A who is also past twelve months. Because of the pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence I have had with nurs­ing K, I hope to also allow A to make the deci­sion of child-led wean­ing for him­self. Also, with A being sen­si­tive to dairy, we won’t be intro­duc­ing cow’s milk or other dairy prod­ucts to him for a while. Con­tin­u­ing to nurse him helps me to ensure that he’s get­ting fats, pro­teins, calo­ries, and other immuno­log­i­cal ben­e­fits dur­ing his toddlerhood.

What I’ve writ­ten are my per­sonal rea­sons for choos­ing extended and tan­dem nurs­ing for my fam­ily. There are also sev­eral resources that encour­age and sup­port extended nurs­ing. If you are inter­ested, here are a few:

Extended Nurs­ing Fact Sheet

Are there health ben­e­fits to nurs­ing past one year of age?

Breast­feed a Tod­dler– Why on Earth?

Breast­feed­ing Beyond a Year

Breast­feed­ing and the Use of Human Milk (AAP)

Pedi­a­tri­cians and par­ents should be aware that exclu­sive breast­feed­ing is suf­fi­cient to sup­port opti­mal growth and devel­op­ment for approx­i­mately the first 6 months of life and pro­vides con­tin­u­ing pro­tec­tion against diar­rhea and res­pi­ra­tory tract infec­tion. Breast­feed­ing should be con­tin­ued for at least the first year of life and beyond for as long as mutu­ally desired by mother and child.

The World Health Organization’s infant feed­ing recommendations

As a global pub­lic health rec­om­men­da­tion, infants should be exclu­sively breast­fed(1) for the first six months of life to achieve opti­mal growth, devel­op­ment and health(2). There­after, to meet their evolv­ing nutri­tional require­ments, infants should receive nutri­tion­ally ade­quate and safe com­ple­men­tary foods while breast­feed­ing con­tin­ues for up to two years of age or beyond.

Maybe instead of my post being called Word­less Wednes­day, I could call it Wordy Wednes­day.

It seems like I always have 4 or 5 great ideas for blog top­ics while I shower in the evenings. Then, I get out of the shower and *bam* they’re gone! Instead of one of those great thought pro­vok­ing blogs, you get this tonight.

Since A was born, I can say that my errand run­nings and gen­eral out­ings have decreased. Some had to do with weather, but a lot of it has to do with the logis­tics needed to get two kids ready, nav­i­gate nap and lunch time, and get in and out of the carseats sev­eral times.

So, I needed to go to the post office. I had three pack­ages to send. I needed to return some books I bor­rowed from a friend, send some cloth dia­pers to a friend, and return a bag I bought on Etsy. First, we went to Tar­get. That went rel­a­tively well, but my hands were pretty well frozen by the time we got into the build­ing. K was coop­er­a­tive, and A tol­er­ated the stroller bet­ter than expected. We got back into the car and went to the post office. I felt like I was in a com­pe­ti­tion at the post office. I had to address the pack­ages, pack the stuff up, and seal it all. Then, I stood in line, and paid for all my stuff and the postage for it. Just as I was fin­ish­ing up, A decided he had enough. He started to com­plain. Luck­ily, I was able to wheel my stroller out to the car and get him in there before he started a full protest.

I thought I deserved a mocha or a latte from Star­bucks for all my work, but since I’m still dairy free, I decided to pass. Mak­ing them with soy milk doesn’t hit the spot in the same way as whole milk does. I guess know­ing that we did it and we all sur­vived will have to be my reward.

Well, I did the elim­i­na­tion diet for a few days, and I saw no results. I ate only chicken and rice. To be hon­est, I don’t even really like chicken all that well (unless it’s a spicy chicken sand­wich from Wendy’s with mayo on it), and now the thought of that chicken makes me a lit­tle queasy. Yuck.

So, for­tu­nately, it appears that A does not have food aller­gies (other than the pre­vi­ously men­tioned dairy allergy or sen­si­tiv­ity). This means he won’t have to spend his life ana­lyz­ing every bite that enters his mouth and won­der­ing if he is going to have reac­tion or if it will be okay. I won’t have to dress him in a shirt that say, “I have severe food aller­gies. Please ask my mommy before you give me any food” at fam­ily gatherings.

Unfor­tu­nately, we really don’t have any leads on the fussi­ness, rest­less­ness, or lack of sleep. I feel like I’m walk­ing a line. On one hand, if there’s some­thing that is wrong and both­er­ing him, I want to know. On the other hand, if he’s sim­ply not a good sleeper, and he never will be, I hate to drag him from one appoint­ment to another, from one diet to another, and from one tech­nique to another. I guess I have to decide at what point I just need to sit back and be okay with not know­ing why he doesn’t sleep and why he cries. That’s a hard thing for a mom though.

When I started NaBloPoMo, I was a spo­radic blog­ger at best. At worst, I some­times let my blog go for *cough* months *cough cough* with­out writ­ing any­thing. After NaBloPoMo, I was pretty ener­gized as far as blog­ging goes. I saw how quickly and eas­ily I could put some­thing up. I liked the feed­back I got from com­ments and friends and fam­ily. What could stop me from blog­ging 20+ times a month, right?

My son.

I’m not try­ing to say that in a mean way. He is sim­ply a high needs baby, and he takes a lot of time and energy to par­ent. If you’ve read my pre­vi­ous blogs, you know that I’ve been deal­ing with a dairy sen­si­tiv­ity and some sleep issues. Well, we are still deal­ing with the dairy sen­si­tiv­ity and sleep issues. I have tried a few times to intro­duce dairy back into my diet with the same results each time. A cries and screams while arch­ing his back for 30–45 min­utes. Not worth it. The sleep issues have changed a bit though. When A was younger, I was often up with him for 30, 45, 60, or 90 min­utes while he was fig­ur­ing out that night just isn’t the time to be up and play. Thank­fully he seems to have real­ized that night isn’t a good time to play and be up. He has, how­ever, gone from wak­ing 2–4 times a night to wak­ing 7 times or more.

In talk­ing with some other mom friends of mine, they sug­gested that since he has a dairy sen­si­tiv­ity, he may also have other sen­si­tiv­i­ties that affect his sleep. For a few months now, I’ve con­sid­ered this and ignored the pos­si­bil­ity. I finally decided to do some­thing about it. Unfor­tu­nately for me, that some­thing is the Elim­i­na­tion Diet. So, for the past 2 days, I’ve eaten noth­ing but chicken and jas­mine rice. I’ve had noth­ing but water to drink. My mom friends told me that if this was going to be some­thing that worked for A, I would notice results in 1–3 days. Well, last night, we did not notice any results. I’m hop­ing for some sort of change tonight.

In all the infor­ma­tion that I read about the elim­i­na­tion diet, I have read that it takes up to two weeks for it to work. To be hon­est, I don’t know if I can do chicken and rice only for two weeks. I don’t love chicken, and I’m start­ing to hate rice (well, not hate). I am not really sure what to do, though. I can’t keep get­ting up with him five or more times a night (Jason usu­ally gets up the other 2–3) and par­ent­ing both him and K dur­ing the day, but I also don’t know if I can sur­vive while tan­dem nurs­ing if all I’m eat­ing is rice and chicken. It doesn’t seem healthy for long term nutrition.

So, that’s mostly why I haven’t been all that active on my blog. Hope­fully, I will be able to increase my post­ing fre­quency as A gets older, starts solids in the next month or two, and gives me some cute funny sto­ries to post.

Well, it’s been three months now, that I have been reg­u­larly avoid­ing dairy. I started when A was about three over four weeks old, we started notic­ing that his evenings were very fussy, and some­times he was cry­ing incon­solably for well over 30 min­utes. I had been talk­ing to my sister-in-law about her baby who is just four days younger than Asa. She said that she noticed when she had a Dairy Queen Bliz­zard, her baby was much fussier. I thought about it, and I real­ized I ate and drank a LOT of foods with dairy in them. I decided to start avoid­ing dairy to see if we’d notice a dif­fer­ence. We did almost imme­di­ately. In the begin­ning, though, I strug­gled to find foods to eat that were dairy free since so much of my diet had revolved around dairy.

We sus­pected that A’s issues included a dairy sen­si­tiv­ity, but he also has some reflux to deal with. Once we felt we had the reflux under con­trol, I tried a few times to intro­duce dairy back into my diet, and each time it was met with cry­ing, fuss­ing, and tummy aches. Poor guy. So, each time, I imme­di­ately elmi­nated it again with pos­i­tive results.

Now, we’re three months down the road from the ini­tial deci­sion for me to avoid dairy. A is much hap­pier, and I am shocked that one can sur­vive with­out things like ice cream, cream of mush­room soup in casseroles, ice cream, milk in cereal, and ice cream. I’m hop­ing that for his sake, it’s only a sen­si­tiv­ity and not an allergy and that he will out­grow it soon.