Thursday, December 18, 2008

another trip to the pediatrician

Today was Jason's follow-up from his hospital visit last week (our insurance requires a follow-up after a hospital or urgent care visit). Coincidentally he spit-up "blood" again today as I dropped Tyler off at school. But again he seemed happy and calm. The pediatrician we happened to see today (yep, another one) also was a lactation consultant, so I knew she'd have breastfeeding knowledge. She agreed 100% that he seemed to have the symptoms of a dairy sensitivity and/or allergy. She did not believe the blood in the spit-up was related to the dairy though, which was nice to hear. She thought it was either my blood or in fact not blood at all. She actually had the lab test it and it came up negative for blood, which she said could have been because they couldn't really get a good sample of it, but it's highly possible that it's not "blood" at all. Apparently food dye is very hard to digest so if I happened to have any red food dye it could look like blood. I didn't think I had had any red food dye but when I got home I checked the label on my grapefruit juice and lo and behold something called "carmin" is listed in the ingredients. Carmin is a food dye. Interesting, huh?

So this might not be the explanation, but it certainly is intersting. Either way, I got a little more confirmation that he's doing okay. She said he seems to be happy and healthy and thriving on breastmilk (13lbs even!!). And I got a little more motivation to keep off the dairy.

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