Here kitty kitty

The dairy train made a stop at the allergist last Friday.

For those playing along at home, let me refresh your memory. When Jack was around three months old, I had to stop drinking milk and eating ice cream because it would make him horribly fussy. Then Jack started with eczema around six months, coincidentally, the same time he started eating yogurt.

We stopped the yogurt after a few weeks, the eczema cleared up. We re-introduced it, it came back. Coincidence? Hard to believe. So we stopped all dairy in his diet and I only ate cheese, which seemed to work.

Fast forward to the weaning process, when we started him on bottles of whole milk and he did fine. But then the diapers started getting looser and he developed diarrhea. We had to switch to soy milk. Well after two days, the soy milk gave him the same symptoms. What to do?

The pediatrician said to switch to rice milk for two weeks and see how that worked. And for the last two weeks, he has had no symptoms. He's been great. Of course there was the one day we tried to give him yogurt and he broke out in a rash, but other than that, A-OK.

But as an aside, I also was giving him about 28 ounces of whole or soy milk a day at that point. I slowly realized, “Hey, there was no way he was getting that much from me when he was nursing.” So I cut him down to 20 ounces a day of rice milk, and the diapers firmed right up. Perhaps it was also a factor of him having too much liquid in his diet all of a sudden.

But we decided to take him to see an allergist to find out if this was an actual allergy, or just an intolerance. After getting some family history -- Josh could not tolerate dairy or soy formula and drank goat's milk for the first two years of his life -- the doctor said it sounded like an intolerance, but let's test to be sure.

She tested for dairy, soy, almond and cat. We requested the almond test so we could feed him almond butter without worrying that he would have a nut allergy. With him drinking rice milk, we need as much fat in his diet as possible and do you know how hard it is to get fat from non-dairy sources? Hella hard.

And with the cat, well gee, since we had cats in the house, the doctor figured we might as well test him, just to rule it out.

(Do you like that foreshadowing there? I should write screenplays with this talent.)

Of the four scratch areas, she said any that looked like a mosquito bite after the 15 minutes were up would be allergies. Within a minute of her leaving the room, Jack had a mosquito-bite looking thing on his back. The scratch test itself must not have hurt because he didn't even flinch and continued trying to eat the paper on the exam table without missing a beat.

Of course, we couldn't remember which of the four areas was which once the doctor left. She told us, but we have the attention span of fruit flies, apparently, and we forgot.

She came back in and announced the only allergy was to cats.

I think Josh blanched for a moment. Max has been with him since college, Lucy was my Christmas present to him three years ago. Jack adores the cats. They tolerate him. We just couldn't believe it.

All the recent studies have shown having pets in the house before the age of 1 is supposed to reduce your chances of developing allergies. He doesn't really show any signs, well outside of the dark circles under his eyes and runny nose -- but that could be from a cold, too. Hard to tell.

The allergist told us it would probably be best to remove the cats from the house. The jury is still out on that. I don't know what to think; Josh is against it. For now, they are staying at Grandma's house, but she doesn't want to keep them because she is afraid Jack will have allergies when he comes to visit there. Josh's sister could take them, but her fiancee doesn't like the shedding.

So we're stewing on what to do.

But the good news is he doesn't have an allergy to dairy or soy and he will surely grow out of it by the time he is 2.

For now, the allergist said to wait three months, ideally, to reintroduce dairy or soy. If we can't do that long, the minimum we should wait is six weeks. Then it's just trial and error to see what he can tolerate.

She said he'll likely have a reaction to goat's milk, since 80% of people with a cow's milk sensitivity have the same sensitivity to goat's milk. But she didn't rule out trying it. We're also looking into buffalo milk and sheep's milk products, both of which can be found at our neighborhood Whole Foods. You know, for a small fortune. Goat’s milk is only sold there in smallish bottles for like $4. A kid Jack’s age would probably go through two of those a day. You do the math.

But until we figure something out, poor Jack is drinking rice milk, which he seems fine with. I think it tastes like watery cardboard, but my palate is perhaps a bit more refined than his.