I'm drinking milk again, without it hurting my baby girl, and it makes me so happy. Raw milk was the trick.
Ben did a little research when I told him about the issue and he couldn't understand, when I described it to him, why I assumed lactose was the issue.
"From everything I'm reading online it seems more like a milk protein sensitivity rather than a lactose one," he said to me.
I admit I got a little offended that he seemed to think he knew more about the milk problem than I did, since I was the one avoiding milk products, and specifically lactose, since last August.
Oh boy, just when we think we are SO SMART, and let others know it, truth does what it so often has a way of doing: it comes in and we discover that we weren't quite so smart after all. "Pride goeth before a fall," is a saying we use frequently around here, and this time I'm the one who took the fall.
After too much protesting on my part, I agreed to try to discover exactly what Clementine's tummy was having trouble digesting. Milk protein? Lactose? Both? Could she do goat's milk, buffalo milk, yogurt, what? I systematically eliminated products and introduced them back one at a time and that led me to where we are today, with a baby who happily tolerates my drinking raw milk with the protein structure unaltered so that it is digestible for her, and who has even had a few sips herself with no adverse affects. I don't give my babies cow's milk before they turn one, usually, but I was curious to see if she could handle drinking a little bit straight. It seems she can.
Now my morning coffee is so delicious, if not even more delicious than it was with regular milk, because the raw milk really does have such a fresh flavor. I'm not really a farm gal, and fresh eggs and milk and cream are mentally a little bit challenging for me, I admit. It's a matter of getting past what to me is "the gross factor" but once I get past the idea of it I agree that the flavors are so much better than what can be purchased at a store. It's funny how the things we get used to growing up become sort of ingrained and we have to tell ourselves that really, homemade mac and cheese is so much better than powdery boxed Kraft (that is an easy one for me) or that real cheese is a good sight better than American or Velveta (another easy one for me, less so for my husband) or fresh, unprocessed, non-homegenized raw milk from a cow is superior to milk that has been cooked and cooled and set on a store shelf.
Okay. Wow. I've written how many blog posts now about milk? I'm sorry. I'm really really sorry. Cate just came in and read over my shoulder and commented, "You're writing about milk, again?"
Yeah, kids. I'm just trying to prove what I've always said to you, that you can write about anything, absolutely anything, and make it interesting. Well, I guess leave off the interesting part, and that statement is 100% true.
