Allergies

On my mom's side of the family, allergies run rampant, including food allergies.  My mom is allergic to casein, an allergy that is so serious that she carries an epi pin.  Additionally, she's got some lactose issues.  Nate was allergic to food dyes as a kid and as an adult has developed the same casein issue.  My cousin has a seafood allergy (I can't remember if it's shellfish or non-shellfish).  

Early in Graham's life, I noticed a little blood in his stool after 2 meals involving shrimp (this was when I was breastfeeding), so I stopped eating shellfish.  In the last month, he's been drinking milk and I've noticed a progressively bad diaper rash and excessive eczema.  The Aveeno eczema lotion helped it, but the diaper rash kept getting worse.  I finally realized it might be the milk he's been drinking.  So this weekend we switched to soy milk.  The diaper rash is almost gone.  Now - we've also been militant about putting on the A&D ointment at every diaper change.  But I suspect that because his other patches of eczema are clearing up, perhaps the Deasy family food allergy has struck Graham as well, and milk will only be consumed in limited doses of cheese and yogurt.

While we were very excited about the fact that daycare provides milk and we'd no longer have to prep and clean all his sippy cups, we'd clearly much rather our little boy be healthy.  So we'll be sending him to daycare from soymilk from now on.