Breastfeeding to Neocate: the switch

The beginning of December marked the end of breastfeeding little Liv.  It probably was best to wait until now to write about this.  I needed some serious time to reflect on the transition and for my hormones to level out.  The hormonal insanity that ensues following a non-gradual weaning is brutal (just ask my poor husband!).

 I was trying so hard to not only nourish Livvy, but to take care of her and L was exhausting.  There was more than one occasion that I just sat down and cried because I felt like a complete failure.  The question started coming in passing from folks 'oh, well why don't you just give her a bottle?'...  the answer is that I was terrified by that point.  If she couldn't tolerate breast milk I knew that any formula on a store shelf was sure to cause BIG problems.  Not to mention, I'm a slightly 'crunchy' girl and try to eat as much organic and whole foods as possible and the thought of formula in general just made me cringe.   I really thought I could gut it out and continue to nurse her.  I felt like I was doing everything 'right' and yet my baby with the happy disposition would continue to morph into a screaming, flailing, spewing, mucus filled disaster on a regular basis.  On top of it all she often suffered through blistering diaper rash.   It was awful.  One minute she was Ok, and the next she was screaming. That was right about the time that L would do something crazy to get my attention because it was being pulled in one (very loud) other direction.

You know-  its possible that I could have done a total elimination diet and stuck it out if Livvy was an only child.  That kind of diet would have most certainly been all-consuming.  I am a mommy to TWO little girls who BOTH need me.  I couldn't push one aside while spending all my time taking care of the other.  As it is, enough time and energy is spent with Livvy pretty unfairly.  I just couldn't do it anymore.  I couldn't handle the stress that comes with being terrified that something I put in my mouth might cause days or weeks of misery for my baby.  We desperately needed some sort of stability to Liv's diet- for all of us.   Despite all my efforts, my baby was still a mess.  I really felt like I was losing my grip.  People would say to me that she looks fine and happy.  Of couse she did.  We wouldn't dare leave the house with her reacting to anything, and she was comfort nursing so often her weight was over the 90th percentile.

The starting point was our first Allergist appointment.  Livvy had just reacted badly with rice cereal about a week earlier, and was still extremely 'needy'.  I was supplying all of her calories and her comfort with constant nursing.  I had so many things out of my diet and was dizzy from my body sucking so many nutrients out of itself trying to keep up with her demands.  My foods were very restricted and yet it seemed like she was reacting more and more to whatever it was that I was still eating.  Sort of like the harder I tried the worse she was getting.  The entire situation was completely maddening.  We were scheduled for a 90 minute appointment with the allergist.  She listened to our entire history.  Although my google doctorate had me all but convinced that we were dealing with FPIES, I was sure to not even mention it when we got in for our appointment.  I wanted to know what was really going on with Liv- no matter what it was.  The first sentence out of the allergist was, 'Well, I think she has food protein induced enterocolitis syndrome given her symptoms and history'.  Its odd to feel relief when you get a diagnosis that involves an ongoing issue for which there is no cure.  But It was a relief, I suppose, to get reassurance that there was something going on and I wasn't going crazy.   This also meant we could start a plan to safely nourish Liv.

Knowing I had been exclusively breastfeeding, the allergist approached the formula subject gently.  I nearly burst into tears in the exam room telling her that I just couldn't do it anymore and YES to PLEASE send us home with samples of elemental formula to try.  I prayed that Livvy would tolerate one of them.   I desperately needed my baby to start to feel better.  Months of seeing mucus and blood in diapers and hearing tiny whimpers of pain while she was trying to sleep was taking a toll.  A mommy just shouldn't have to deal with these things- This is not a scenario that was covered in any chapter of What to Expect When You're Expecting...

We started with 3-4 different bottles and a plan to stay home for several days to try to establish bottle feeding.  The first day after only a small amount of formula it was very obvious that Livvy was feeling better than normal.   Getting her to drink the formula wasn't fun.  She was MAD.  It tasted horrible and she wasn't at all used to eating out of a bottle.  The following week I pushed a bottle at her about every half hour in hopes that she'd start to get used to it all.  Honestly, it is a bit of a blur now.  I was so stressed out wondering if the formula was going to stop being tolerated and if she was drinking enough.    Probably about 10 days or so later I felt comfortable that not only were we tolerating the formula, but thriving with it.  I also knew that if there was a choice of breast or bottle, baby girl would want the boob juice every time.  I knew we needed to go cold turkey; both for the transition and because she was so much more comfortable on formula.

I took a deep breath and, with my hormones already crashing all over the place from only nursing about half of the normal amount,  sat down to nurse my baby for the last time.  I cried.  Blubbered, really.  As Oprah would say, I had an ugly cry.  This was it and we weren't going back.  After months of a pretty restricted diet, I marched myself into the kitchen and whipped myself up a box of macaroni and cheese. I knew that I couldn't nurse her after eating dairy since that was the worst trigger for her in my diet.  I plopped down at my dining table with the whole pan of macaroni from the stove and ate the whole thing.  Then I cried again.

It was a whirlwind couple of weeks following.  My hormones were crazy, my baby was emotionally crazy, but physically doing MUCH better.  I knew we had made the right decision for us; for our family.  In the end, it really eased my stress level knowing that we had something to feed Livvy that would consistently be tolerated.  We had crossed the first hurdle to safely nourishing our little Liv.