Wheat and "ooos and ahhs"

New things to report! I cut wheat out of my diet last Thursday morning after my four days off coffee, chocolate and soy seemed to produce no results in Chou-chou. I know four days is pretty wimpy, but I felt like I was dying without at least one cup of coffee. Maybe you're wondering why I've eliminated soemthing else after I said all was fine and dandy since we went lactose-free? Well, about a week and a half after Milk's d-day, we finished Chou-chou's prevacid prescription and were tempted to see how things would go un-medicated. It's just hard to know what kind of affect all those big people drugs have on a little guy like Chou-chou, and we seemed to be doing well sans dairy. Unfortunately, things went a little haywire w/out the prevacid:( Not as bad as before, but still not as good as we'd gotten used to. He got a little arch-y and fussbucket-y. So, out of frustration I cut out pretty much everything else that was good: soy ( I really like vanilla soy milk), chocolate (shoot me now), and coffee (see above). You may all be thinking I'm crazy (sidenote: is anyone actually reading this?) cutting out this and that, convinced with my gallons of medical expertise that Chou-chou is allergic to something. I don't know that he's allergic to anything at all other than dairy. And he's probably just sensitive to it and will grow out of it in a couple months or so. But the reason I think there's something else is that he has had the typical allergy "target" diaper rash for months now, and has had watery poops for at least a month (hopefully many of your are parents and can relate to the poop analysis). Those two things, combined with painful nightwaking, lead me to believe there's something I'm poisoning him with! The painful nightwaking has gotten much better since we parted ways with dairy. The whole point of this paragraph was supposed to be wheat, though ! After reading my favorite baby doc author Dr. Sears' food sensitivities chapter in The Sleep Book (how had I missed this??), I learned that dairy and wheat are the only two scientifically proven allergens that cause nightwaking. And so, after cutting out wheat (pasta, cereal, bread, most other things "yummy"), I'm here to report that... I can't tell a whole lot. We both think he seems generally less fussy, but it's less measurable than the dairy. But, you know, maybe we should just be happy with how it's going and call it good?! All I know is I'm not changing anything til we see the ND next Saturday ( did I mention we got cancelled on last time at the last minute?)...

On to the "oos and ahhs"... rewind to last Tuesday morning, sometime in the early a.m. Jarod had kindly gotten up with Chou-chou at 5-something (since I'd been awake the better part of the night trying to get him to sleep), but come 6:30 he put Chou-chou back in the amby for his "nap", kissed us goodbye and headed off to work. A full five minutes later I hear fuss noises. Ugh. No really. It was a rough night. Ugh. Frustrated Mommy picks Chou-chou up out of amby and brings him in bed to nurse, hoping that'll do the trick. It doesn't, and Mommy's about ready to cry. Then... "ooo", "ahhh", "oohhhh". The sweetest sound I think I've ever heard. No yelling. No fussing. Chou-chou found his voice. After three weeks of "oohing" and "ahhing" for Chou-chou multiple times every day, he "ooed and ahhed" for Mommy. I don't know if my ooing helped him at all or if it was just his time, but seeing his little baby lips experiment their way around his new voice lifted my heart and pulled me out of bed. The "yelling" of just two days prior had yielded a new little voice, and that precious sound has filled our house for the last five days. Not that the "yelling" has entirely subsided, but even that is pretty cute, too.
More to report on Chou-chou's sitting up unassisted, new pushing-up skills and scooting, but those'll have to wait. I put the goober to bed one hour, eight minutes ago, so I'd better get my hiney in bed too.