Benson update

We have had some of the strangest issues with our sweet little Benson! The latest being: I was changing his diaper last week and noticed some small streaks of blood in his stool. This, of course, totally scared me, so we went in to see what the doctor had to say about it. He did a hemacult which is where they take a sample of poopy from the diaper and put it on a little test strip and pour some stuff on it. If there is blood in it, the blood specks show up blue. Even though it looked like he had just a little blood, when the doctor poured the liquid on it, the entire test strip turned blue! He said that meant that his stool was full of microscopic blood and that he had some sort of bleeding in his intestines. Never having heard of this before, we were completely shocked and wondered at the cause. After a week of various tests, it turns out Benson has Milk Protein Intolerance which means that his stomach cannot digest cow's milk. (Not to be confused with lactose intolerance: an inability to break down the sugar in milk) Of course he doesn't DRINK cow's milk, he drinks mine, but anything I eat or drink, he does too. So milk, cheese, butter, or anything with any of those ingredients such as bread, cream, etc. are what was making him sick.

So we wanted to know how to get him well. Initially, the doctor said that we could put him on this special hypoallergenic formula that would cost about $100 a week.  The fact that it would cost an arm and a leg to do this special hypoallergenic formula gives me even more motivation to do whatever it takes to keep breastfeeding. He said that I could continue breastfeeding if I could avoid all dairy and soy (a percentage of babies who are allergic to milk protein are also allergic to soy protein.) So now mama's on a strict dairy free diet eating mostly meat and veggies so that baby has a happy tummy. So far, it seems to be going well. We will reevaluate on Friday to make sure he doesn't have any more blood in his stool. Please pray with us that it will be clear and that the dairy free diet will solve this problem. I'll post later with the updates!