I Gave Up Chocolate For Him

Want to know a good weight loss program? It involves a lot of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, and some days you might just want to crawl into that space between your couch and the wall and die, but it works! Read on.

When my four year old Aidan was born, I was thrilled. And exhausted. And baby bluesy. When he was three weeks old, I was changing a poopy diaper and saw blood in it. I called the pediatrician immediately, and they told me to bring him in, along with the diaper, so they could look at it. They were pretty confident it was a milk intolerance, so they told me if I wanted to continue nursing, I would have to cut all milk and dairy products out of my diet, including anything with milk proteins in it. This includes anything with the words "casein" or "whey" in the ingredient list.

Did you know taco seasoning has a milk protein in it? Did you know hot dogs have a milk protein in them, unless it is the Hebrew National brand? It seems like just about everything has a milk protein in it these days. Just read the labels. Also, can you imagine not eating anything with cheese? Can you imagine not eating ice cream, for heaven sake? For me, that was a very sad day.

I felt very strongly about continuing to nurse my child. I cried every day for the first two months. I mourned the loss of my daily Kit Kat. I searched high and low for things I could eat. (It didn't help that for the first few weeks the doctor thought it could be a wheat/gluten intolerance too so for three weeks I ate nothing but chicken and vegetables.) He continued to have blood in every dirty diaper for five weeks. I continued to cry as I watched what I ate. My husband begged me to stop nursing and just bottle feed him. I refused, because I wanted to do this for my son.

I slowly found things I could eat: anything with the word "parve" or "pareve" on it (it's a Jewish term meaning no dairy, I believe). Big Hunk candy bars. Twizzlers. And then I found a margarine-like product called Nucoa. Yes, even margarine has a dairy product in it. But Nucoa is parve. And on the back of the container of cocoa powder (which has no dairy or milk proteins) I found a recipe for brownies. I could finally make something chocolatey using Nucoa and cocoa powder! Once I found this recipe, and Tofutti Cutie ice cream sandwiches, I enjoyed eating again and my weight stabilized. But at my lowest weight, I was six feet tall and 130 pounds.

When my son turned six months old, his pediatrician told me I could slowly, just once a day for a couple of weeks, have a little bit of dairy to see if his body had outgrown the intolerance. My very first dairy product after nearly six months? One stick of a Kit Kat bar. And it was heaven. I slowly eased back into dairy, and luckily, Aidan never had a problem again.

These days, Aidan eats all of the dairy products he wants. And I learned that if I have determination, I can do anything.


P.S. I am submitting this to Scribbit's write-away contest. Oh, and I believe that every mother has the right to choose whether she breastfeeds or bottle feeds her child. I personally felt very strongly about nursing mine.