I was told a number of lies whilst still prego with Sprout. One of the biggest ones was about poop. In every book and blog, and on each message board I subscribed to, I was informed that my baby, if breastfed, would have poop that smelled remotely like buttermilk or buttered popcorn. A little sweet, but not like poop at all. Wow. I'm not sure what these people were eating, or what exactly they snorted in their teens, but Sprout's poop (from day one) smelled like...well, poop! There were even times that I thought I might gag a little because she literally reeked like a cute little rotten egg. Sulfur. Urp. After the meconium cleared out (which only took two days), she developed the usual nasty mustard-seed looking stuff. If you don't have a child and haven't ever been exposed to a breastfed baby's poop before, it goes through phases.
Phase One: Meconium. Sticky, tar-like black substance that oozes out and is notoriously difficult to wipe off a baby's chubby little rear. Tip - use Vaseline. Made my life waaaaay easier. I still use a tiny bit to protect Sprout's girlie bits, and she has yet to develop diaper rash (hooray!).
Phase Two: Yellow Mustard Seeds. The bowels of a breastfed infant don't quite come with an instruction manual, but as long as their poop suddenly turns to the exploding bursts of yellow seed-looking things, you're on the right track. I had experienced this once before with my nephew when he was a few weeks old and the health nurse came out to the house to weigh him. My sister stripped him down to his diaper, and was asked to have him fully in the buff as to get an accurate measurement of his weight. She obliged, and while changing him said something along the lines of "I hope he doesn't poop on the scale!". Poop on the scale, he did not. Instead, as she was carrying him over to the scale from the travel bed, he proceeded to explode all over her living room rug. I had to laugh. I ended up cleaning it while they finished their visit. If you have any children, I'm sure you'll remember this phase with some sort of hilarious story about how your baby sprayed seedy poop all over yourself, your spouse, your furniture, or even your pet. With Sprout, it was always me who got the bum-hose attack. Thanks, miss. I'll remind you of this at your future nuptials.
Here's where things get a little off-kilter. After the seedy poop, breastfed infants are supposed to shift to a new phase: yellow, runny, almost diarrhea-ish (gross - believe me, I know), also-exploding poop. Sprout had this for a little while, but not for long. Her poop changed at some point, and although I haven't exactly pinpointed when, I'm sure it was when I started being able to time-manage a little more and get in more food/snacks during the day. Being a breastfeeding mother, I wanted to ensure that Sprout was getting enough nutrients, and that I was also getting up to my crazy expected caloric intake. If you are nursing a baby, you are supposed to take in an extra 500-600 calories per day. I laughed so hard when my family physician told me that at our 3 week checkup. When you're trying to breastfeed a non-compliant baby every 1.5-2 hours, when the heck are you supposed to eat?? I finally got a bit of a handle on the sustenance thing for a while, and because of the calorie requirement (and my worry of depleting my own calcium stores), I upped my dairy intake. I am a big milk drinker. I love all kinds of dairy, especially the not-so-good for you things (butter, ice cream, cheese, etc.). I don't think I am truly lactose intolerant, but my IBS definitely does better when I drink Lactaid milk, so that's what I was consuming at the time. Sprout started developing some strange symptoms that seemed to increase almost daily for about 6-8 weeks. She got a rash, mostly on her face, scalp, and neck, that always got worse within an hour of feeding her. It was a red, pinprick-type rash that everyone always told me was "just heat rash or baby acne". I'm a first-time mother, so I just thought I'd run with that and forget about it. The next symptom that showed up was an increase in the amount that Sprout would spit up after eating. It was gross. Almost enough to be classified as vomit. The last symptom, which had already been around but hadn't been connected to the others, was her poop. Normally, a breastfed baby will start out pooping several times per day. Sprout had poop in her diaper every time we changed it. Until we found out what was wrong, I just thought it was totally normal for her to have pooped a little every couple of hours. And like I mentioned earlier, it wasn't the consistency or colour it was supposed to be. It was darker, brown-ish, and full of mucous. What wasn't mucous was pure liquid. It soaked into her diapers like urine. Plus, she always cried when she had to poop. The family physician, at first, just said that some babies don't like the feeling of having to defecate. It's something new that they've never had to do before, and it takes a while to learn exactly what they are doing, which made sense to me. As the days and weeks went on, the symptoms got worse, until she started having blood in her stool. It began as black and dark red flecks, and quickly moved to bright red streaks and puddles in her diaper. We took her into the family physician right away, and she told us it was most likely a cow's milk protein allergy.
Most everything that you eat as a breastfeeding mother is broken down to the point where even a child that may be allergic to peanuts later in life will not sport a single hive if their mother eats a peanut butter cookie and then nurses them. I thought that milk protein meant lactose (even though lactose is a sugar, not a protein...duh), so even though I was told to cut out dairy, I still had the occasional piece of cheese, and ate yogourt daily, which are both lower in lactose than regular milk. Lessening the amount of dairy I ate seemed to make a bit of difference in Sprout. Her rash was still there, but better; she spit up less often, but still did; but her poop never seemed to get better. In fact, it got even worse. She began having what we affectionally called "cappuccino foam" poops. We'd go to change her diaper, and she would poop mid-change (that's always fun) and it would come out like brown cappuccino foam, with chunks of mucous and red blood. I called the family physician back, but they informed me that I wouldn't be able to bring in Sprout for a week and a half. A baby. With bloody poop. I was livid. So I took her to the local walk-in clinic and was referred to a pediatrician. Ped-Doc got me in within a week.
At her appointment, I was given way more information about what a cow's milk protein allergy is, and how Ped-Doc was absolutely 100% positive that's what she had. Cow's milk protein is notoriously difficult to digest. Even an adult's mature digestive system has a difficult time. It is also one of the things that doesn't get broken down as much in breastmilk. Though the allergy is rare, it is not as unheard of as congenital lactose intolerance (galactosemia) or other digestive disorders. Ped-Doc went through a very thorough history of Sprout's symptoms, and after examining her and viewing a sample of her rash, and her poop, told me that I had to lay off the dairy. Completely. No more yogourt or cheese...or ice cream...or butter. At all. Not a hard thing to do when it comes to the health of your child, but apparently hard for others to understand. There is a blood test available for further investigation of milk protein allergies; however, it has been proven to be very inaccurate in children under the age of two. Actual allergy scratch-testing is also not done under the age of two due to inaccuracy. The good news about all this: Sprout will most likely, as 75-80% of kids do, grow out of this allergy between the ages of two and three. It will be a matter of exposing her to dairy products and seeing how she does with them, starting at around 9 months of age.
The hardest part for me is that I have lost my source of good fat and extra calories. Oh yeah, and calcium. Since I have stopped eating dairy altogether, I have lost 6 pounds. As a new mom trying to get back into shape post-natally, you'd think I'd be jumping for joy, right? Wrong. Those 6 pounds were not of fat, they were of muscle mass. I could literally feel my body starting to protest and get sluggish after the first few weeks. I'm currently trying to supplement my diet with prenatal vitamins and calcium chews, and by eating more hard-boiled eggs (I hate eggs) and avocados for protein and calories, but it is really difficult. Gone are the days of having cereal for breakfast, yogourt as a snack, and cottage cheese with raspberries before bed. All of my go-to quick meal/snack options have been thwarted by my daughter and her picky body. I am looking forward to the day when I can stop pumping milk for her and start eating dairy again. Hence, I am working my ass off day in and day out trying to pump enough excess that I can stop sometime in the next 3-6 months.
There isn't really a lesson or moral of the story today. I just wanted to share Sprout's story about the allergy thing because I've been asked about it a lot. She is doing so much better now that I have stopped the dairy altogether. Her poop is completely normal - light brown/yellow-ish, a little thicker than it used to be, and she only goes every 3-5 days (kind of irregular...there will be a few days of break, and then once a day for a few days, and then another longer stretch). Funnily enough, as gross as her poop used to be with the foam, bubbles, mucous, and blood, my poor husband can hardly change her diaper without gagging, and he used to be totally fine! Maybe it's because it looks more like real poop now, I don't know. Either way, I'm not going to lie - I love watching him squirm! Sprout is up from her nap and currently babbling away to the monitor, getting more frustrated by the minute that nobody is there to listen to her chit-chat. I'm coming, love. Next blog will be about my struggles with food. I think. Unless I come up with something better. Anything will probably be better than poop.
Sorry, Sprout. On my way.
xoxoxo
Mommy
P.S. Counting the title, there are 27 'poops' in this blog. Oops, 28 now...
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