Goat’s Milk: Our First Double Food Trial

Well. We decided to trial BOTH boys on goat milk.

At the same time.

I can hear you all thinking it: Why would they do something so crazy?

Well, Jed has MSPI, and has been kept away from dairy products since he was 5 weeks old. However, he’s had infrequent accidental ingestions of dairy along the way. The most recent was almost a year ago, when he helped himself to a Snicker’s bar.

He did wind up having bloody poop from that. So, we reset the clock on waiting two years before his next milk trial, and went about our business.

Now enter Zac, our FPIES munchkin.

I’m heading back to work in just a couple of weeks (ack!) and we are worried we won’t have enough stored breastmilk to get him through the days that I will be gone. Ever since our trial run, I’ve been pumping as often as I can and have managed to add considerably to the stockpile, but it is still a concern.

Since we are waiting for the gardens to grow safe veggies to trial for Zac, we’re sort of scrambling to find things that will be corn-free to trial on him.

One day Darrel and I were brainstorming potential food trials and the idea popped up to perhaps trial dairy. 

Zac has never had dairy directly. I was dairy-free for all but two months of my pregnancy with him. Dairy is a frequent FPIES trigger food, but there are  FPIES kiddos who can handle it.

And dairy would solve the problem of not having enough pumped breastmilk for me to return to work comfortably. 

So I went online to find local raw milk farmers in our area. Thank God Arkansas state law changed last year to allow the sale of raw milk!

I called everyone I could find and asked what they feed their cows. Everyone stated they were “grass fed”…except, of course, for when they actually milk the cows. Then they ALL gave their cows grain.

Twelve pounds or more of grain per day, in most cases! Ugh!

The few who were willing to tell me specifics about the grain confirmed that corn and oats – two of Zac’s biggest triggers – were the first ingredients on the list.

Hmm.  That makes me uncomfortable. 

Then I found a goat farmer. She also grains her goats during milking, but she told me that she HATES giving her goats any grain. She said goats are not meant to eat grain, and she prefers to have them eat what is natural for a goat 99% of the time. So she gives them the smallest amount of grain possible just to get them into position to milk.

Her grain is also corny, but she showed me how much she gives her goats and it was truly about 1 cup per day.

That’s not a lot of grain. And it was the best option we could find.

So on Tuesday the kids, my Mom and I drove down to the ranch to visit the goat lady.

That’s a whole post all on its own, but the short version is: the kids loved it, and my Mom and I each bought a gallon of milk.

Once we had decided on goat milk instead of cow milk for Zac’s FPIES trial, Darrel and I decided to go ahead and trial Jed on it, too. It’s a long shot, but some MSPI kiddos can tolerate goat milk, while cow milk triggers them.

Wednesday morning I gave both boys goats milk. 

Zac got about two ounces, and Jed got about a cup.

Zac likes to play with his beverages. He’ll drink them, but once he’s had enough he likes to fill his mouth with the liquid and spit it out while grinning mischievously.

He drank an ounce of milk, then started playing with it. So I took the glass away. He seemed to like it, but that was enough for one day.

Jed, on the other hand, couldn’t get enough!

By the time breakfast was over, he had consumed 1/4 gallon of goat milk all by himself.

He kept asking for more goat milk all day long, too, but I cut him off at 1/4 of a gallon. That was enough for the first day.

I also handled things a little differently with Jed from the beginning. He’s older and verbal, so I sat down and explained to him about how we know cow milk upsets his tummy and makes him sick, but that we wanted to know if goat milk would be okay for his tummy, so would he mind drinking some and letting me know how he felt in his tummy today?

I feel like, at his age, he needs to start being a participant in his food trials.

He said yes, so we proceeded, and all day long I asked him how his tummy felt. Every time I asked, he would tell me “Mine tummy feels just fine.”

He pooped once on the potty (yay for a child who seems to finally be potty trained!) and it looked pretty good, but, frankly, I wasn’t going to dig through the toilet water to investigate too clearly. I saw no indication of blood, though.

Zac never pooped at all. He even took a nice, long, two and a half hour nap in the afternoon.

Both boys seemed just fine at bedtime. It was as if it was a normal, non-food-trialing day in our household!

I am praying so hard that both boys are safe with goat milk.

But at the very least, I would love it if ONE of my boys could handle it well.

If you don’t mind throwing some prayers our way, I’d appreciate it.

Was your MSPI kiddo able to tolerate goat milk? What about your FPIES kiddo?