I have big kids!

We went for Will's 2 month check-up and Leah's 2.5 year check-up this morning. Leah had the cosackie virus this week and thankfully is fully over it now. She checked out all healthy - hitting all her milestones. She's now 38.25 inches tall - still off the charts. And she's 29 pounds, remaining in about the 60th percentile. She grew 2 inches and gained 1.5 pounds in 5 months. Her BMI is only 14, which sounds low to me, but the doctor was unconcerned and said she's a healthy growing toddler. Will is also all healthy and hitting his milestones. He's now 24.5 inches long and 14 lbs 6 ozs. He grew 1.5 inches and gained almost 3 pounds in 4 weeks. He's in the 95th percentile for weight (up from 83rd) and the 92nd percentile for height (up from 88th). But he's tracking well - he's just a big boy.

The big discussion though was that Will still has quite a lot of gas and it seems to be causing him pain, waking him up, etc. I mentioned that the gripe water may or may not be helping - we thought it was but then it didn't seem to consistently help, so maybe it was a fluke. The issue seems to be getting worse, not better. So Dr. O'Connor recommended that I try removing dairy from my diet.

I have done some research on this in the past couple weeks and more intensively today. I had been reading that the most likely culprit if the problem is something that I am eating is milk proteins. If that's not the problem then there are other things to try - but no need to go more extreme to start. The issue with the dairy is not the lactose, so lactaid is still off limits. I am going to try cutting out all milk, cheese, yogurt, butter, etc. - including milk derived ingredients that are found in many baked goods and even cold cuts and such. I've been reading up on it so that I can avoid it all - and then if it does the trick I can try to reintroduce the smaller amount items (bread, cold cuts) and just stay off of the big dairy items (milk, cheese, yogurt, butter).

I'm going to try this for 10 days and see if it makes a difference. If not we will try eliminating other foods. If so then I guess I'll be dairy free for awhile. I can try to reintroduce it every month or so, but it seems that 6 months is the magic mark for many babies to be able to process the milk proteins. As annoying as it will be to go without dairy, I am hopeful that it will help. I hate seeing Will in pain - and I also hate being awoken a couple times a night because of it.