If you know anything about a total elimination diet (TED), you know that no one does them for fun. Often, they are used to pinpoint food sensitivities to lessen inflammation causing uncomfortable symptoms. And doing it is an intense experience that requires a lot of willpower and personal accountability.
You basically find your “baseline” foods by picking 1-2 meats, 1-2 vegetables, and a fruit that is low on the allergen scale. Once you identify that none of those foods are reaction-causing, you then eat those foods only for 2 weeks until symptoms improve. Then, you start to integrate foods in one-by-one every 3-4 days and monitor symptoms for a reaction. It takes a long time and a lot of patience. Of course there are other ways to do elimination diets, but this one packs the quickest punch in terms of symptom resolution – at least in my opinion anyway.
In my case, I had done a variation of an elimination diet back in 2018 where I found out I was sensitive to gluten, dairy, and eggs. And even though my health still wasn’t perfect 4 years later, I wasn’t doing the TED for me, I was doing it for my daughter who I was suspecting was reacting to my breast milk. She was very colicky and refluxy, suffered from lots of spit up and mucousy diapers, had a hard time sleeping, and was fussy almost constantly.
Dr. Sears is the doctor that is often mentioned when discussing TEDs for breastfed babies. He recommends starting with a diet of turkey, lamb, potatoes, rice, millet, squash, and pears. Unfortunately, because of my SIBO, I couldn’t tolerate large amounts of white rice. Plus, sweet potato is a known GI trigger. While I tried them both, they had short lives in my TED.
After some further experimentation (and finding out my daughter was reacting to the olive oil I was using to maintain a healthy caloric intake), I settled on a diet of bison, lamb, boiled zucchini, carrots and plantains, and pears.
By the time I figured out that was the optimal combo of foods for me and my daughter, her symptoms of colic and reflux improved within 3-4 days. It was incredible. Even more impressive was that my seborrheic dermatitis scales cleared up on my face almost immediately too, only to come back when I reintegrated oats.
My daughter’s diapers improved over time too, turning into the types of diapers I only ever heard about – yellow and seedy. She also was having wake windows where she wasn’t crying the entire time. Plus, she wasn’t arching and hysterically crying while I was nursing her, and she didn’t spit up a ton after feedings. In fact, we had some days where we didn’t have a single ounce of spit up at all!
We were so thankful that we were able to see improvements in such a short amount of time. She wasn’t a perfect baby by any means (Dr. Sears also coined the term “high needs baby”, which I think perfectly describes our daughter), but it takes some parents many months of experimentation while dealing with way worse symptoms including bloody stools, eczema, and anaphylaxis.
If I slipped up and got too lax on the diet, or reintroduced foods haphazardly, or even carefully added a trigger food, it was evident within a few hours and her symptoms returned – sleeping disturbances, irritability, gas pains, crying/fussiness, and spit up. My husband and I were very highly attuned to minute changes because of the bad PTSD from her inconsolable crying and fussiness the first 4 months. Because of that, I could usually re-baseline her symptoms within a few days by taking out the offending food(s). Those instances reaffirmed that the problem was rooted in what I was eating.
Realizing my foods were causing a reaction in my daughter was a reality that was hard for me to admit. Even after we undeniably saw improvement with diet changes and regressions when I slipped, a strict 5 food diet is really hard and admitting that it was working meant I had to rescind any emotional associations with food.
Not only that but I lived in a pretty consistent state of fear. Fear that I would introduce a food that would give us another disastrous and exhausting day. Fear that I would run out of my “safe” prepared foods and grab something for convenience that would later cause a reaction. With very questionable diapers or poor night sleep, I would often say, “I can’t believe I did this to her”, and I would feel like a terrible mother. The weight and pressure of that was a lot to bear.
Dramatic as it might sound, I was also sad I couldn’t have my protein bars, my morning coffee with stevia, and my sprouted trail mix. It seemed unfair that I ate so healthy to begin with and my daughter still reacted to the foods I was eating. Having the endurance to eat the same foods for months on end and to do so without cheating is feat I never thought I could accomplish, and it was only possible because the alternative was way worse.
We are still in the re-introduction phase of this diet and trying to find a larger “safe” variety of foods that my daughter will tolerate in my breastmilk. The “completion” of this reintegration may even take us well into her 1st birthday, and we will be doing so with the help of a food sensitivity test. That’s a price I’m willing to pay to have a baby that doesn’t feel sick and parents that don’t feel depressed.
While the TED might sound intimidating, it can be a great option if all else fails for a colicky/reflux/gassy baby, or if they have known allergen-type symptoms. For us, we tried so many things including countless doctors, products, and remedies. Nothing worked quite like the TED. If you decide that a TED is right for you and your little one, and you want some extra support, check out the TED Mamas Facebook group. I know for us, TED has given us parts of our lives back!
