To Lactose-Free or not to Lactose-Free, that is the question...

So about 6 weeks ago, I realised that Cooper's bowel moments weren't exactly normal. They were explosive, smelly, watery and had mucus in them. He was also always bloated and would scream for hours. I am the queen of "Doctor Google" so after searching every website possible, I had narrowed the options down to one of two things; he was either lactose-intolerant or he had a cow's milk allergy. I decided that considering he was only breastfed and I was barely consuming any dairy, that we would go with lactose-intolerant to begin with. So I bought some lactose-free formula and starting alternating his feeds between breast milk and the formula. The change was incredible. Gone was the screaming, uncomfortable baby I had lived with for weeks and a happy smiley baby was in his place. His poo became nice and healthy looking (still smelly but in a normal way!) and everything seemed to be going well.

Then two weeks ago, someone told me that I could get the lactose-free formula on prescription if he was medically diagnosed as lactose-intolerant and therefore cutting the cost of each tin of formula from $24 to $7. So off to the doctor we go. Now in order to do a lactose-intolerance test, I had to reintroduce lactose into his diet. So onto normal formula we went. Oh my god. He screamed. He pooed the most disgusting green sludge I have ever seen. He was miserable. And here I am, with a "feces sample collector" (aka poo jar), scooping up this vile sludge to refrigerate (yes, that's right... poo in my fridge) until I could drop it into the doctor's clinic.

So today we go back to the doctor for our results. "Hmmm" she says, "results inconclusive due to compromised sample". Uhhh WHAT?! All that was for nothing? It appears that the sample was meant to be FROZEN immediately after collection, which the doctor didn't know and therefore didn't tell me. For f**k's sake... maybe they would like to come and live with Cooper for 3 days whilst I redo the test? I'll go sit in a nice quiet lab and test poo and they can come and deal with a poor hysterical baby in utter agony? No? Ok so I guess it's up to me to do it all again.

Anyway, the doctor said she was going to look into other testing methods first. So I'm awaiting her call to see if there is a light at the end of the tunnel rather than a replay of the three worst days I've ever had to put my little man through. Fingers crossed...