Casein Allergy

Last Wednesday night, I made the Chicken Satay recipe out of the Internal Bliss cookbook. YUM. It was SO good. In place of the coconut milk called for (since I didn't have any made), I used GAPS yogurt. We sat down to dinner and everyone was enjoying it. Hannah DEVOURED her chicken, dipping it in the sauce, and then started to complain of a stomach ache. I didn't think anything of it (as fast as she had eaten), so I sent her to the couch to lie down for a few minutes until she felt better. She came back to the table a few minutes later with hives all over her lower abdomen.

Since she had a severe allergic reaction just a few weeks ago, Nick immediately got her some baking soda water to head off the reaction. She drank a little, her upper lip swelled, she sneezed quite a bit. Then she stabilized and we were able to put her to bed at the normal time.

The next day, her belly was protruding, so swollen that her navel was puckered up. She had a fiery red rash under the skin that was no longer raised like before. It covered only her lower intestine area. I decided to take her to our ND, which required an hour trip each way in the car by myself with all three kiddos. This went amazingly well. He checked her belly, and told me he was rather concerned about it. I had brought a grocery bag full of GAPS foods we had been eating, and he muscle tested her on them. The yogurt and ghee are the culprits. I asked him, "How can she react to ghee?" He didn't know. The imprint of the casein?

We removed those from her diet, and her belly returned to normal within two days. The rash healed slowly. She has had no further problems this week.

I had to wean Hannah earlier than I wanted because I got pregnant when she was only 8 months and couldn't keep up with the calorie demands. We put her on raw goat's milk formula until she was obviously reacting to it and gluten at 15 months, when we pulled her off milk altogether. There was nothing else I could have done at the time, but I wonder if her sensitivity developed when her gut was so damaged from being a c-section baby, gluten, and we added the goat's milk on top of that. It might be a long road to healing this sensitivity, if we ever can.