This is part of Rosie’s story:

Rashes

Spring 2018: Rosie had her first bottom rash at 2 days old and it lasted for 3 months. It finally cleared up after eliminating dairy, soy, and gluten from my diet (since I’m breastfeeding), but not for long.

Crying Fits

At 2 1/2 months old she began having screaming fits. They would last about an hour and began to happen more & more frequently. She would arch her back in pain and scream & cry. I could only console her by putting her in the baby carrier on my chest, bouncing her, and giving her gas drops. She would also rub at her head & ears during these episodes.

Food Sensitivity Test

She continued to have rashes & screaming fits, so at 4 months old she had a finger prick IgG 96 Food Panel test done*, and as a result I eliminated several more foods including peanuts, chicken, some veggies & fruits, and oats. Her mood improved and she got rashes less frequently. Even with the improvements, she continued to struggle with rashes and crying fits.

Sleep

Sleep was a challenge for her. She woke every 1.5-2 hours for months. Occasionally she would do 3-4 hour stretches (you better believe I was on cloud nine those days). She would often wake up crying and arching her back in the night, obviously in pain. Around 9-10 months she went through a period of waking up at midnight and being wide awake until 2am.

Eating Solids

Fall 2018: She started eating solids at 6 months, but she could only seem to handle eating 3-4 foods (rice, pears, carrots, apples). She developed eczema on her cheeks and her other symptoms worsened. At 11 months old she was still very limited in foods she would tolerate.

Emotional Reactions

Rosie was a very irritable baby. She was frequently crying and very particular. She only liked three other people besides my husband and I. When we would get together with my extended family (which is about 40 people, 25 are kids) she would cry most of the time.

As she grew older it got a little better, but she would quickly escalate from calm and happy to raging or hysterical. (This can be a side effect of histamine intolerance, too much histamine triggers the fight or flight response).

Histamine Intolerance

Spring 2019: Because of all of these symptoms, we went to see a functional medicine pediatrician who specializes in gut health. He suggested, that based on her symptoms she might have histamine intolerance, and recommended changing my diet to low-histamine foods and putting her on some probiotics and supplements.

The main way to test if histamine intolerance is actually your issue is to go on a low-histamine diet for 4-6 weeks and see if your symptoms improve. If they do, then you likely have a problem with histamine. More info on that here.

So that’s how I was thrown head first into the deep end of a low-histamine diet. It took me weeks to revamp my diet (for the third time in 11 months!). Fortunately Rosie’s symptoms did improve, although slowly, and because of that we are still on a strict low-histamine diet. I have found many recipes and resources that have helped me on my journey and I want to share them with you! 

My experience

It’s difficult to put into words what I went through during Spring 2018- Summer 2019. There were SO many emotions. So much worry, fear, disappointment, anxiety, stress. With eliminating so many foods, I lost weight rapidly, including almost all my muscle. Thankfully my body can make an amazing amount of milk and my supply never dwindled. My health was poor, I got mastitis twice, a UTI, and felt very weak. I was worried about my health because of how many foods I had eliminated. At one point (the worst point) I was limited to 23 ingredients that I could eat.

However, as I reintroduced foods I had cut out from the IgG test, and just stuck with following the low histamine diet, I have grown stronger, actually gained some weight, and feel really good most of the time!

Knowing about histamine intolerance, and how it explains so many of her symptoms, and how much she has improved since starting a low histamine diet has been a HUGE help for me emotionally. Believing that we are headed toward healing gives me so much hope!

*I do not recommend doing the IgG tests, as they are not scientifically sound, and can be misleading. Check out this video for more info:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GK4RDxOx-4&feature=youtu.be

**That being said, it was a step in our journey that sort of pointed us in the right direction, so it was useful to us. But it also led to me cutting out many foods that were not necessary to avoid.