bye bye dairy.

Today I took Sam to a chiropractor in Carmel. I’ll admit I was skeptical at first — who takes their babies to a chiropractor? But in our desperate struggle to figure out what was causing all of Sam’s night wakings, I thought it was at least worth a shot. I had really been struggling with what to do. I had so much conflicting information whirling and swirling around in my sleep-deprived brain. Was he waking out of habit? Did he just need to cry himself to sleep for a few really rough nights? Was all this waking up normal? For some reason neither of those strategies really sat well with me.  Somehow I just felt that something was bothering Sam, and that’s why he was waking up so much.

As it turns out, his neck was a little screwy. Probably from being posterior at birth. The chiropractor said his head wasn’t exactly aligned with his spine. He was also suffering from some tight muscles at the base of his head, which was why he didn’t want to nurse on the left side as a wee bitty baby. He couldn’t turn his head to get in the right position.

The chiropractor (who is a lovely, smart, holistically-minded doctor) also said that his puffy, red eyes were most likely due to a dairy allergy. I had long suspected a dairy allergy, but for some reason hearing it from someone else was the impetus I needed to go ahead and eliminate it from both of our diets.  She also said that the dairy allergy was contributing to his frequent ear infections. The tight muscles at the base of his head were also contributing, as they were preventing his ears from draining completely.  With a few adjustments, and no dairy, we’ll be on our way to (we hope) better sleep and fewer ear infections. Woohoo!

I think I will be able to find dairy-free substitutes for most things I love (like milk, and ice cream, and cream in my coffee). But I will miss cheese a lot. It’s not forever, and I’ll probably be healthier in the long run without it. And, of course, my baby boy is worth it.

So we waved bye-bye to dairy today. Sam just figured out how to wave bye-bye. It’s so cute. Now when we are getting ready to go somewhere, I’ll say to him, “Let’s get ready to go bye-bye.” And he’ll start to wave. He’s just cute.