Mommy Of The Year Award

"And the 'Mommy Of The Year Award' goes to..." (drumroll!)..."Stephanie Clark! Stephanie failed to follow the instructions of her Le Leche League book and now her son has a horrible allergic rash! Congratulations, Stephanie! You not only win the 'Mommy Of The Year Award', but you also win a month's supply of guilt and kicking yourself in the butt!"

It's true. The one and only time I fail to follow the advice of my Le Leche book, my kid breaks out in an allergic rash all over his body. Fabulous. We noticed a rash under Christian's chin at his 4 month checkup and began applying Desitin. Well, Desitin obviously has no effect when your son is ALLERGIC to cereal! His rash kept getting worse and I finally said, "No more! I'm takin' this kid to the doctor!" The doctor said to hold off on cereal since he is (obviously) allergic for about two months. I told her he wasn't really interested anyway and she said to just go back to breastmilk only.

I wish I could copy and paste what my LLL book says on starting solids before your child is ready...seriously, Christian is like, a poster-child for that section of the book. He's not interested in solids as far as eating them is concerened...he's just interested in looking at your food! He's not trying to grab your spoon to feed himself...he's trying to grab your spoon because it's "Shiny! Ohhh! Look at the shiny thing Mommy keeps sticking in her mouth! Want the shiny thing!" The other thing it clearly states is that if you feed a baby cereal and a grain of cereal gets to his bloodstream (through coughing...which happens a lot because he's learning to masticate), his body will develop an allergy to it. Well, guess what? His did..good job, Steph.

Well, lesson learned! We won't be starting solids until he is truly interested in them...and with the way this kid loves the breast, that could take a while...