Giving Up a la Mom

I mentioned several posts ago that my body is a temple.  One thing I've discovered since becoming a mom--its certainly not a temple to me!! A lot of things go missing from your temple when you have a child--some things obvious, others not so obvious!

You start losing things with the pea still in the pod: curves in the right places, sleep, bladder stamina, lung space, and comfortable positions to sleep in.
Later, once the baby is out, you find you've lost some more things: sleep entirely, bladder control, personal time, showers, abdominal muscles, and that thick, luscious hair you developed while pregnant.

The one thing I was excited to hang on to was that super-boosted metabolism I developed while cooking the little bun.  At least for a few months anyway while breastfeeding.  A ravenous appetite and finally no limitations to what I can have!  Or so I thought....

Then Ezra decided to develop persistent stomach issues.  How did we discover this?  The way you discover a lot of problems with babies--poop.  I won't go into details on what it has looked like, but basically I have spent the last 3 months with my nose buried in dirty diapers, gooey, smelly, sometimes fizzy diapers.  Ugh.  If that wasn't enough to kill an appetite, the diagnosis: food allergies.  Most likely culprit? Milk proteins.  So I had to eliminate dairy from my diet.  Along with dairy went its likely partner in crime--soy.   Giving up dairy and soy was pretty killer--they are in EVERYTHING.  And I LOVE ice cream.  And cheese.  And chocolate (did you know there is soy in almost all chocolate?  I almost wouldn't have survived if not for Seattle-made Theo Chocolate bars, which at $4 a pop are a rare but worth-while treat!)

Unfortunately, dairy and soy were an improvement but not quite enough.  So that mean TOTAL ELIMINATION.  No, I haven't quit eating entirely.  But total elimination means giving up all 8 major food allergens, dairy, soy, wheat/gluten, eggs, peanuts, nuts, fish, shellfish.  Once symptoms disappear I can slowly add them back in, one at a time, minor offenders first.  So I've done it--for the past 2 months.  Yes, this makes me an awesome mom and no, I won't let Ezra forget it.  But it is so hard!  I am hungry all the time!  And I just want some cheese, please.  I have no idea what an emulsifier is, all I know is that I can no longer eat it, and it is in a lot of yummy things!  And eating out has become such a chore, where I have to talk with managers, scour menus, and even after all that work Ezra often still seems to react to something..  What does that leave me you ask?  Rice.  And meat.  An hours to shop, prepare, and cook from scratch.  I'm back in Mauritania and I can't even throw in a Maggi cube for flavor because many spices have soy as a stabilizer!!

I guess this is one way to lose the baby weight.