Welcome to the World, Reis! (6 months belated)

On May 8, 2013 at 7:19pm, after 19 hours of labor, our world changed forever. Reis Chamberlin Smith weighed 6 pounds, 2 ounces and was 19 inches long.

So, what is life like now? Pretty chaotic, as I’m sure you can tell. It’s been almost 8 months since we have written anything! Reis is almost 6 months old now and he seems to grow and learn new things daily. We are lucky that he is a very happy baby!

Unfortunately though, Reis is not vegan right now. I started out trying to breastfeed him. I won’t go into all of the details, but it was quite the ordeal. Reis was considered to be underweight and they had to check his blood sugar regularly to see if he was getting anything. His blood sugar stayed low and they had to supplement with formula. Not a single drop of colostrums or breast milk ever came out. We tried it all, and nothing worked.

For the first 4 weeks, he was a pretty miserable little guy. We ended up figuring out that he has a milk protein allergy. So, we went to soy formula. He also developed an allergy to that. He is now on a formula that is made of milk, but the protein is broken down so that he is able to digest it. He has become a totally different baby since starting this. The crying stopped within days. Thank god for science!

Reis’ doctor thinks that he will outgrow these allergies by the time that he is a year old. I have a suspicion that he will always have a tough time with dairy. He recently developed bronchiolitis and I have read that this can also be a result of a milk allergy. It is also a sign that he could develop asthma. Avoiding dairy is a common thing for asthmatics. So, Reis will become vegan as soon as we can manage it.

I am going to request that allergy testing be done on Reis once he is old enough. We will move forward with food choices for him after that. We have agreed that Reis will eat vegan as much as we can control it. We won’t get upset if he has something that isn’t vegan (as long as it isn’t causing a reaction). We are hoping that educating him about why we eat this way will help him to make choices of his own when he is older. Basically, our plan is just to try our best.

As for me, I’m still a work in progress. I’ve been mostly vegan since Reis was born. However, I haven’t been the healthiest lately. Since Reis was born, I’ve lost 35 of the 38 pounds that I gained. The last few pounds seem to want to stick around. I’m working on not making excuses and getting back to a whole foods, plant based diet. I just purchased the Eat to Live Cookbook by Dr. Fuhrman and it’s been inspiring me to get back on track. I’ll write a review of some of the recipes shortly.

Are there any mommies out there who need to get back on track, too? Maybe we could start our own little group to support each other and give ideas. Leave a comment if you are interested!

Farm Sanctuary, Watkins Glen, September 2013