circle of babies

Today was the last meeting of my mom's group. These kinds of pictures are, I think, pretty routine for these kinds of groups. Pretty cute, huh? Elias is in the bottom left corner. It's amazing how quickly the time went by and yet how much each of the babies grew over the five week period. I think I've been slightly less frazzled the past couple of weeks, but I still can't seem to make it there by 10 with all of the following accomplished: baby fed and diapered, mom showered, teeth brushed, breakfast consumed, hair dried, makeup on. There was one week where I actually realized I'd completely forgotten to brush my teeth on the way there. Fortunately I had some gum with me, but that was definitely a "you know you're a new parent when..." moment.

A lot has changed since that first meeting, when Elias was not yet three weeks old. And yet sometimes I feel like most of what continues to keep us on our toes has to do with feeding and digestion. Despite all our efforts, Elias's spitting up hasn't dramatically improved over the past three weeks. There's been some improvement, but I can't say that baby Zantac changed my life, or that eliminating dairy from my diet totally turned things around. Elias is not, in fact, a completely different baby as a result of any of these things. He does seem to be a little more content generally, a little less physically uncomfortable. But he still spits up an insane amount and there are times when he literally cries out because of it. We still have a bit over a week to go on the dairy elimination diet before we go back to the pedi, and honestly I wasn't very vigilant about hidden dairy (dairy is in everything) until a day or two ago, when it dawned on me that there's an awful lot of butter in those cookies I enjoyed over the weekend, even though I skipped the tall glass of milk. There are times when such a strict diet seems very do-able; if vegans can do it, then certainly I can do it, especially with eggs and meat thrown in. I think the thing that frustrates me - aside from the fact that I'm not sure it's helping - are all the "non-dairy" products that have milk or milk derivatives in them. Like soy yogurt, for example. The live active cultures are milk-based. Why else would you eat soy yogurt? For the oh so delicious taste?

Anyway, I'll certainly stick it out for another week or so. And then I look forward to the dairy challenge, during which I'll reintroduce a bit of dairy (ice cream, anyone?) to my diet and see how Elias reacts. Of course, if it is a milk allergy that's causing some if not all of his digestive issues, his reaction will not be pleasant, but the eating ice cream part sure will be.