Life Gets in the Way, Failure & Goats

I have fallen off the blog wagon, because in the last month:

•      My beloved dog has been diagnosed with an enlarged heart and is on his way to heart failure. The vet added a seventh medication to the mix of the pills he gets, doled out in varying combinations six times a day.
•       My elderly and magical cat has had an ear infection for months and months and months that could not be cured with every antibiotic you could throw at it. So the regular vet sent him to a specialist, who scanned his head, discovered both ears were filled with a freaky infection (a different one in each ear), so she punctured his ear drums and power-washed the inside of his skull. Yes, they actually do that. I saw the video.
•      My husband is back to his heavy travel schedule, so I am single-parenting it most of the time. I seriously don’t know how single parents do it – hats off to you guys, because having no help trying to raise a nice person, keep them fed and in clean(ish) laundry is a lot of freaking work.
•     Georgia turned one and that required some sort of merry making, as well as transitioning her away from formula to milk. Despite devouring every sort of dairy product in her path before one year, she suddenly developed a problem with dairy and it took some doing to figure out what was happening.

The point, when I started Cooking with Georgia, wasn’t just to document success, but also talk about things going awry. However, I was too busy trying to sort out what was up with Georgia (plus all the other stuff in the list above) to chronicle it in writing. This is my attempt to summarize the milk experience and our journey to the solution.

Georgia initially was horrified by straight milk. She would spit it out and stick her tongue out of her mouth as if she couldn’t possibly put it back in her head with that terrible taste on it. I can so relate to that feeling. So I started giving a combo of formula and milk, first more formula than milk and then the other way around.

We got to several ounces of plain old milk a couple of times a day and then the fun began. My happy, happy girl was grumpy. She cried. She had some gas. She got constipated. Her appetite was diminished. Her nose was snotty.

While it may seem obvious, milk wasn’t the clear-cut culprit. She has been on a milk-based formula since the beginning. She loves yogurt and cheese. She could eat an entire container of yogurt in one sitting and not have one bad side effect.

It is cold and flu season, so the runny nose could be a cold and we had just been at the baby vet, surrounded by sickly children.

One-year-olds usually have a reduced appetite, because the major growing they did in the first year drops off and toddlers will eat what they need to survive and thrive if you let them decide how much to consume.

Georgia got four teeth all at once, which would make the best of us cranky and go off our feed.

All the books and reputable web sites I consulted say that some gas and constipation is not unusual with any big dietary change.

So I kept an eye on her and things weren’t getting much better after about a week. The crankiness and gas got worse, so I spent a ton of time reading about lactose issues. All of the unpleasantries listed above are indicative of a milk issue, so I decided to find a substitute and see if lactose was our enemy.

I am not entirely sure if the milk problem was because I was using an organic pasteurized but non-homogenized milk and that was making it hard for Georgia to digest. Perhaps it is because she is biracial and African Americans often have lactose issues, because they lack the enzyme necessary to digest dairy.

Because Georgia has tolerated all sorts of milk and dairy products in the past, I am not convinced the problem is a hereditary/evolutionary one and at some point in the future will try to reintroduce other forms of dairy and a homogenized version of milk, but not any time soon.

I have done a ton of research on milk and my conclusion is all the criticism of it is a result of what we do to the milk in our far-from-the-farm/extreme fear of rancid dairy culture. In fact, I am a huge fan of raw milk and prefer it for myself, but not for Georgia. It doesn’t have a long shelf life and there is certainly a greater danger of it going awry, since it has to be transported and to sit about in the store. If we could get it straight from the cow, I’d feel better about it. Pittsburgh allows chickens in the city limits, but probably not cows. Hmmmm….

Soy milk is just bad news. Highly processed soy, which the milk is, in the quantities kids are supposed to consume milk can have estrogen effects on the body. There are links to cancer and processed soy consumption. It can affect the thyroid and there just isn’t a ton of nutritional value in soy milk.

Almond milk really is not an adequate nutritional substitute and unless you get the sugary kind, I think it tastes gross and so does Georgia.

The answer is goat’s milk. This version is ultra-pasteurized and is supposed to be easy to digest. Georgia LOVES it and we didn’t even have to mix it in with formula. She gobbles it up with every meal and we’re almost done with formula entirely. Her stomach is better, she is back to being the happy girl she always has been. A bit of probiotics thrown into one serving of milk once a day sorts out any sort of constipation issues associated with this dietary change.

Whew!