Why a Rogue lifestyle?

Tarver Rogue arrived on January 22, 2012. I expected him to change my life, just not so dramatically. When he was about 3 months old, I discovered with the help of my IBCLC sister Brooke, that he had a milk allergy. And by allergy, I mean ALLERGY! His diapers were nasty--mucous filled and sometimes tinged with blood. If "mucousy" doesn't describe it well enough, imagine a snot monster attacked your baby's diaper. Or remember that scene in Ghostbusters where the guy gets slimed with ectoplasm? It looks a lot like that. As a third time mom, I had never seen a diaper like this in my kids. So I was alarmed.

WARNING!!!! GRAPHIC PHOTO OF POOP FOLLOWS!!!!

There. No more poop picture (If you've scrolled properly.)

I'm a breastfeeding, baby-wearing, co-sleeping mama. So my life is now dramatically different. I'm not a milk "drinker" but I do love pizza, ice cream, whipped cream, butter, cereal (with milk), cream cheese, baked goods, and butter. Oh how I love butter. Now, I can't have any of it. NONE of it. No butter. No cheese filled danishes. No whipped cream squeezed into my mouth while hiding behind the fridge door. At least not traditional dairy laden whipped cream. No dairy butter. How am I going to survive!?

When we went to our favorite restaurant Rancho Viejo, a couple weeks ago, I ate something bad. Very bad. I had one of those delicious deep fried tortilla chips sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, drizzled with honey, with a dollop of whipped cream and a raspberry coulee drizzled on top to make it extra enticing. Oh gosh golly darn it all! I forgot about the whipped cream! John reminded me as I had a huge mouthful of delicious Mexican after dinner treat, that whipped cream was in fact dairy! Well, it was too late at that point unless I wanted to gag myself and waste a lovely dinner. So poor Tarver suffered through three or so days of nasty, mucousy poop again. And along with the poop came tummy aches. Poor baby.

Then one day when rushed and hurried and running around like a deep-fried-in-butter-chicken-with-her-head-cut-off, I went to Dairy Queen. Why would any clear thinking, breastfeeding mama with a baby with a dairy allergy go to Dairy Queen? Well I don't know. I'm obviously not a thinker. Anyway, I went through the DQ drive-thru and ordered the delicious fried in fat (not butter) chicken strip basket. Well, I can't have fried chicken without gravy, so I ordered gravy to go with it.  Oh gosh golly darn it all! I forgot once again and ate dairy. The gravy (which probably comes through the back door of DQ in powdered form) is most likely a dairy base. I realized that as I contemplated licking the little Styrofoam chalice that once held my gravy.

So I'm going to blog about Tarver's journey with me in our dairy free lifestyle. I'll include photos of my adorable little man. I'll review products and share recipes.

Welcome to the Rogue Lifestyle!