Failed Soy

Well, we were too optimistic, too soon. Apparently Hallie cannot tolerate soy.

She was fine until Wednesday afternoon (if we forget about that Sunday night vomit). We stepped up the amount of soy to 2 ounces of milk on Wednesday, and after lunch she vomited. Still, this could have been because she had cried following her blood draw (her doctor's appointment went great---her lungs sound clear, her weight is up to 26 lbs again and she is 33.5 inches tall. This places her at the 42nd percentile for weight and 44th for height. The doctor has no concerns about her cognitive ability at this point and was totally pleased).

Anyway, Wednesday night she seemed fine with more soy milk (another ounce) and yogurt (an ounce). But Thursday is a different story. She had diarrhea on Thursday afternoon, vomited after dinner (in public---the restaurant was nice, the patrons, not so much. Note to readers: extend sympathy, or at least simply ignore, retching and vomiting kids. Do not screech "EWWWWW", especially if you are a seemingly mature 30-something-year-old and above), had diarrhea after vomiting, woke up with diarrhea on Friday (necessitating another bath, a changing of the changing table, another load of laundry, and a shirt change for mama who finally figured out that the lingering smell was coming from herself). Then more diarrhea (3 bouts and counting, if you must know) and another vomit added in for good measure this afternoon, replete with ashen gray pallor. Fun, fun, fun. Little in the way of food eaten, but she is hydrated (a couple of wet diapers even with all that) and no sign of lethargy or anything like that, so we have no reason to believe she is sick.

We were careful to buy brands that did not contain rice (amazing that many do), so that's not the cause. And while she is teething (all 4 canines have finally broken through), we've been through teething before and it has never involved diarrhea. So in the absence of any other factor, we have to believe that it's soy that's at the root of all this and that we just hit a critical mass in terms of the amount she needed to trigger an enterocolitis event. We'll see. If we're correct, she should improve markedly in the next 36 hours and go back to baseline within 72.

Meanwhile, we're pretty dejected around here because we were so hopeful that soy would at least provide Hallie with another food option that was protein-rich. Not to mention it was wonderful to think that she might have FIVE food options. But I guess it wasn't meant to be, and while she can certainly tolerate trace amounts of soy (not true of rice and buckwheat and milk), it's important to strip her diet of allergens if we want a chance of her outgrowing all of this.

Anyway, this post preempted and eclipsed another post that I will be writing about Hallie's birthday week. Hopefully things will run their course tonight and I'll feel better about writing something more upbeat tomorrow after Hallie's big birthday bash.