Friday, September 5, 2008

Could it be Complete Protein Intolerance?

A couple of weeks ago, Emily had her 9 month appointment where we got the ok to introduce meat into her diet. We started out with turkey - giving her Earth's Best Organic Turkey Dinner (it also contains barley, apples, and carrots). The second night she woke up screaming through the night (very unusual for her) and nothing we did would calm her down. For 2 hours my husband and I tried everything we could think of to ease her stomach pains until finally she had a bowel movement that calmed her right down. We decided to stop giving her the turkey dinner as we weren't sure if it was the turkey or the barley causing the problem. The following week, I was busy preparing for a friend's baby shower. I tried different recipes during the week including one for Potato and Bacon Fritattas. I am not normally a fan of eggs, but these were very tasty, so I ate a few of the testers and the following day Emily had horrible gas. On Monday of this week, we decided to try her with chicken giving her Earth's Best Organic Sweet Potatoes and Chicken (knowing that she had had all of the other ingredients this time). I also tried not giving her much each day to slowly introduce it to her. By the 3rd day, she was up almost every hour with gas or hunger pains. Again, we stopped giving her the meat, and we had our happy baby back. I started doing a little research online as I thought I was going crazy - she can't be intolerant to everything! I found an article that sounds exactly what she is experiencing - an intolerance to complete proteins (meaning anything from animals as well as soy). I hope it isn't true, but it's the only explanation we can think of right now. We have an appointment scheduled with a pediatric gastroenterology on September 18th to be sure. Maybe we are over reacting, but I have a beef intolerance and my sister has a milk protein intolerance, so I can't help but think this is something I passed onto her. I also know the pain that it causes and I can't imagine my poor baby going through that.