The Competition

or…what this blog’s all about!

Back in January I saw the Three Mummy Bloggers competition advertised on the Baby Expert forum. I had to write about a challenge I’ve faced as a mum in order to win a smartphone from Three, loaded with apps designed to help with my challenge.

My beautiful boy at 5 days old

I only became a mum in September 2011, when my gorgeous boy Ryan was born by emergency c-section. I fell in love straight away, I’d bonded with my bump very early on in my pregnancy but seeing the little man I’d been looking forward to meeting for the past 9 months was just amazing, and I knew I’d do anything for him.

I always knew I wanted to give breastfeeding a go, but didn’t realise how much it mattered to me until we found it such a struggle. Ryan couldn’t latch on properly and it became quite painful. However, I was determined, and I got a lot of help from the midwives, breastfeeding advisors and lactation experts at the hospital, and we slowly figured it out. We had an extended stay in hospital (8 days in all) as Ryan had to go on antibiotics under SCBU, and because of this we had follow up appointments at the hospital. It was at these appointments that they realised Ryan wasn’t gaining weight, and this coupled with a few other symptoms led them to determine he was CMPI (Cow’s Milk Protein Intolerant).

This basically means he can’t digest cow’s milk properly, and it was just going straight through him, and aggravating his insides along the way. It is apparently fairly common for babies to suffer from this, or lactose intolerance, and they often grow out of it by the age of one, which we are hoping for. The usual treatment is to put babies on a certain type of formula milk, which is only available on prescription. But I was so adamant that I was going to continue breastfeeding that it was up to me to cut dairy out of my diet, to avoid it passing through me to him.

This meant cutting out some of my favourite foods; chocolate, cheese, along with some things you wouldn’t expect to find milk in such as flavoured crisps! It is amazing the amount of food that milk is found in in its various forms, and I’ve had to check the labels on everything I buy to eat.

But Ryan is totally worth it. I’m so glad I didn’t give up – we finally mastered the breastfeeding at 4 weeks and haven’t looked back! It’s convenient, it’s free and we both love the closeness. He is now 7 months old, and I hope to feed him until he is one, so it’s dairy free for me until then. Yes it’s been a challenge, and if I was dieting for myself I’d have given up long ago, but when it’s for someone who relies on you to keep them well it’s easy to give up anything.

So that’s the challenge that won me a lovely day out in London for a photo shoot, and a shiny new phone, loaded with apps including ‘Foodwiz’, which scans barcodes and tells me if the item contains milk, and ‘Dairy Free Fast Food’, which is self-explanatory I think! Watch this space to find out if they help.