Today was a big day in our house.
Rowan drank a glass of milk.
Cow's milk.
And she was so pumped!

And it was a bigger deal for me. An anxiety inducing, scary mom moment, actually. Yes, over a glass of milk.

I am completely dairy intolerant, my brother is the same~ it is not an allergy but a total intolerance which includes trouble breathing, migraines, GI stuff, joint pain and so on. Both bro and I had it as children. It disappeared only to return in adolescence and worsen ever since.

So when Rowan showed a reaction to dairy the moment she was moved to formula at 6 weeks, she was flipped to soy, same problem. We spent the first 2 years completely egg, soy and dairy free. It was tough since most dairy is replaced by soy and we don't have access to a big city with these sort of options within several hundred km.

At 3.5 she has been on soy for a year since the allergist confirmed she is not allergic, although she may be intolerant. Same goes for egg and dairy but she was still reacting. Flash forward to the last couple months and Ro has been having bits of dairy and egg in things like a cake with no problem.

Good stuff, right? Absolutely. So why the anxiety?
I had postpartum depression which took 9+ months to diagnose. And my issues/ struggles/ anxiety surrounded feeding~ dehydration and jaundice and breastfeeding struggles after birth lead to majorly guilt inducing quitting of breastfeeding (that is a whole other story) which lead to dairy reaction and the onset of fairly nasty reflux (GERD) in Rowan that lasted until about 18 months and still shows up in texture issues with food. No real biggies, but enough to play into my PPD from the night I spent sobbing in the hospital with my non-responsive/ non-feeding newborn until well into her second year of life.

So here we are with a healthy 3.5 year old drinking a glass of milk.
And I think I am as excited as Rowan is, because it is a step forward to letting go and not putting my issues on her, even as it opens up her ability to share freely with her friends in simple delights like an ice cream cone.

She proudly put the milk on the track at the grocery store and declared she was going to drink "milk that comes from a cow". And I took a picture of her with her very first milk mustache!