At the end of October 2016 I decided to cut dairy out of my diet. Many people ask me if it’s hard or say they couldn’t possibly live without cheese! I think these photos convey the reason I don’t find it a struggle at all.

On the left my poor baby was just 6 weeks old, suffering terribly with colic and then she started with a rash on her face. One evening we were so concerned that we took her to the out of hours GP who told us she had colic and something called Milia and to just put coconut oil on her face. We did this for almost a week with no improvement. On a second trip to the doctors we were told it was baby eczema (which I thought was more likely as I had been researching myself online). We were given a non-perfumed moisturiser but it wasn’t clearing the rash so I did further research. I found information that suggested baby eczema could be caused by an allergy to a protein in cow’s milk known as CMPA.

Anybody who follows my Instagram/blog will know I already love my food and that I have a gluten free diet for my own health reasons. So, I decided that since I was breastfeeding I would cut the dairy out. Within two days the rash was visibly better and by the end of the week it had cleared. Not only that but my baby was no longer crying with pain caused by wind and was no longer fussy when feeding.

I remember on a bad day wondering how I would ever make it out of the house as my daughter was feeding every hour and suffering so much with wind, pulling her legs up & crying. Once I’d cut out the dairy everything changed and breastfeeding became so much simpler as she could now take bigger feeds and was able to get the wind up on her own without all the discomfort.

My baby has just turned 5 months old and is progressing so well. I’m still exclusively breastfeeding – something which has been so precious to me and I’m so grateful that it has worked for us AND I’m still dairy free.

This will not be the answer for everyone and I’m not recommending for people to remove dairy from their diet without discussing with a doctor first, I simply wanted to share as I’m a true believer in the relationship between food & health.

To all you Mums out there – remember, you know your baby best!

Jane x