Cut the Cheese!

It is almost painfully obvious that Lily Belle's lactose intolerance is back with a vengeance. I guess technically it never left. She has always drank soy milk since we found out about the the lactose intolerance when she was a year old but she was [happily] able to eat cheese and some yogurt. We tended to stick with soy yogurt and have now jumped on the "lactose free" yogurt that just came out. That's been a bit hit! But LB still gobbled up cheese like a pro - mostly american cheese. It was so easy to heat up a grilled cheese sandwich, tear off pieces of a slice of cheese for a snack, heat up a quesadilla...*sigh* In fact it was the quesadilla that threw the red flag for us and I could just KICK myself for not seeing it sooner.

Lately LB has been waking up about 2 hours after going to bed screaming crying, arching her back, inconsolable, not wanting anything - not even comfort. She would just sit there and scream and Den and I would rack our brains trying to help her which mostly ended in frustration and one of us (the less patient at the time) would leave and the other would stay to sit it out with her. And then she would just be done and fall back asleep after that.
It is so painful to watch this and not be able to do anything to help. We just sit with her until she is done and then tuck her back into bed. We didn't even spend that time thinking of what it could be. I guess with all the other medical problems and colds she's been getting we haven't really sat down to think about it. And it was very sporadic. Lately it's been almost every night but before that it would be once or twice a week - not consistent enough for us to be too worried.

Ugh. Even writing this it is painfully obvious that it was cheese. Or at least something that digestive that was causing this pain. Oh well, no use blaming myself for it now - I can only test this theory out and see if it helps.

Yesterday was her first dairy-free day. This might sound stupid but I went from being really upset about this whole lactose intolerant thing (just another thing different about her that'll make things more difficult again) to mad at myself for being down about it (really, Allison? So many people are lactose intolerant these days!) to being the wait and see how it goes - (it may not be the cheese? And if it is, we'll deal with it like everything else.) Do I have lots of personalities or what!?

So, anyway, last night was the first night LB hasn't woken up screaming crying out in pain.
She did wake up plenty of times to cry - but at least not in pain. We're dealing with another cold, of course, so I'm not surprised with yet another rough night of sleep but at least there was no painful crying.

I still am a bit sad that LB is this lactose intolerant now but mostly because the little girl just loves to eat some cheese! I guess we can try again in a few weeks with a small amount of cheese to start with.