Our Why is Constipation!

Our daughter suffered from constipation from the time she was born. Even now after all the things I’ve done to aid her in regular bowel function, she has “functional constipation.” That means she poops, even regularly, but the consistency of the movement changes throughout the week. It starts harder and more ball-shaped and transitions to a softer thinner consistency. This is a huge improvement from the terrifying horrors we used to witness any time she would finally HAVE to poop. She would grip my neck and scream as I tried to move her legs into a squat position to make it easier for her to push.

I tried to breastfeed, I just never produced enough milk to fill her belly. She became jaundiced and was hungry. I fought it for 3 months while I was on maternity leave, needing to turn to formula. I bought the best option I could buy. I never liked it but it’s what I had to use to feed my baby. A part of me feels responsible for her imperfect gut. Now, the power I do have is to continue to give her the best I can give her!

I wanted off the formula. I had a gut feeling to remove it from her diet, but the options are limited here in America. (Note: around this time, the Similac lawsuit commercials had started.)

I’m fortunate to have some wonderful people who do things differently than the mainstream. My eyes were opened to the possibility for Raw Milk to be our answer. I would’ve preferred goat’s milk (more similar to human milk) but cow’s milk is what is readily available to us. My farming friend Echo informed me that she has given her two healthy kids (now 3, yay!) raw milk since they were 10 months old.

Ember was 8 months old at the time of this conversation. I researched, I planned, and I talked to my husband (and to my worried mother.) I felt the gut PUSH to begin the transition at 9-months. Interestingly enough, the chosen European formula I was giving her had to make some changes to accommodate the USDA regulations…*insert eyeroll*

I spoke with Echo to find out how she transitioned her kids and I came up with my own plan to do this with Ember. She is doing SO much better. She went from one to two bowel movements per week to one almost every day. As mentioned above, she still has functional constipation. That means her gut still doesn’t move as quickly to eliminate food, and I can tell in the way she eats.

She goes a couple of days without pooping. When she starts “filling up”, she’s picky and her appetite is poor. After she’s gone through the very soft, almost diarrhea-like stools, she’s ravenous for a couple of days and will everything in front of her. The pediatricians only recommend fruit juice occasionally to help her go at this age (18 months).

How We Transitioned

Okay, that’s enough about poop! Let’s talk about how I set up the transition to raw milk! I’ll include some information about raw milk below.

Please ensure your baby is healthy enough to begin a raw milk transition! It is not common for pediatricians to support the decision to make this change, but you can always speak to them anyway. Premature immunocompromised babies and adults may consider not introducing raw milk at all or even this quickly.

Step 1: Figure out how much milk your baby is consuming per day.

For us, this was about five bottles that were five ounces each (that’s what she preferred to drink.) So that equaled approximately 25 ounces of milk per day. I was already mixing 1 quart of formula per day.

Step 2: Layout a plan for introducing milk.

My gut told me to begin the transition at 9.5 months old. I opted to take 6 weeks to transition her fully to raw milk and created a breakdown for the introduction.

Ember drank five bottles of five ounces per bottle. She wouldn’t drink more than five ounces at a time then. I wanted to start slowly with two ounces of milk and increase by 2 oz/day for the first 4 weeks. Then mathematically, it was easier to increase to 15 oz/day, then full raw milk in week six.

Step 3: Educate whoever will be in charge of baby’s care during the days YOU won’t be there and choose a start date!

At any point in this transition, I could’ve backed her back down to the previous toleration. We did not experience anything more than more frequent stools (which was our goal!) She tolerated it wonderfully and adapted to the taste easily.

If your baby drinks a different volume of milk, and you would like some help figuring out a transition schedule, please contact me because I’d love to help you! There’s a contact form at the bottom of this page.

Raw Milk and Safety

Listen, I get it. It took me some time to change my way of thinking that all our dairy needs pasteurization before it’s safe for consumption. But that’s just not true. Before I determined if raw milk would be safe for my daughter, I experimented on myself! I drank NOTHING but raw milk and only ate real food at dinner for four days before I ever created the plan you see above.

Raw Milk is the way nature designed it to be. Human breastmilk is technically in a raw form, too! We don’t pasteurize that. Raw cow milk contains bioactive components naturally. These components are:

• Kill Pathogens including lactoperoxidase, lactoferrin, leukocytes, macrophages, neutrophils, antibodies, medium chain fatty acids, lysozyme, B12 binding protein, bifidus factor, beneficial bacteria
• polysaccharides, oligosaccharides, mucins, fibronectin, glycomacropeptides, bifidus factor, beneficial bacteria to prevent pathogen absorption across the intestinal wall

These are built-in safety systems that no other food has! “Of interest is the fact that there are no reports of death from fluid raw milk in the medical literature, going back over fifty years; but there have been dozens of deaths from pasteurized milk reported in the literature during the same timeframe.” ~ A Campaign for Real Milk

There was absolutely a time in history when pasteurization became a necessary act to prevent the spread of illness. As people began to congregate closer together, cities emerged, and people also began to consume animal milk, diseases that could be spread from milk to humans increased. Deaths from tuberculosis, typhoid, and diphtheria were linked to hundreds of children annually. In 1913, the typhoid epidemic that killed thousands resulted in mass pasteurization for the city’s milk supply, and infant mortality rates dropped from 27% down to 9%. So, yes, there absolutely was a time in history 150 years ago when HYGIENE standards of practice led to the spread of disease, and society found a solution in pasteurization. ~ The History of the Road to Pasteurized Milk by On Pasture

However, pasteurization also compromises the nutritional value of milk. Vitamin A is a fat-soluble nutrient found in raw milk that is very sensitive to heat. Necessary enzymes that aid the body in digesting milk are destroyed by heat.

Below is the availability of nutrients in comparative milks from a study done by The Raw Milk Institute.

You can quickly see the comparison and nutritional value among the different types of popular milk with this chart. If you’re going to include this potential superfood into your diet, wouldn’t you want ALL of the nutrients available to you?

Not all states allow for the consumer to decide their own choice to buy raw or pastuerized milk. We live in Pennsylvania and can! Follow this link for a locator to find authorized sellers near you.

Here’s a quick view of the USA to see if Raw milk will be available to you.

Links & Resources

Raw Milk Finder

Home

https://www.rawmilkinstitute.org

https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/php/publications/unpasteurized-cow-milk.html

The History of the Road to Pastuerized Milk