Sigh...

We took the step a few days ago to finally cut dairy out of my youngest sons diet. I have known for ages that he can't tolerate , say, a glass of milk. I only use rice milk or some other gluten free alternative to cook with and for him to drink/ use in cereal. My dad cannot tolerate any gluten OR any dairy. I was hoping that we would get away with only gluten free.The other day he had a bowl of yogurt for breakfast ( remember the pretty yogurt cake?) and he got those purple circles under his eyes ( they usually have huge bags anyways) and got really moody and had a pee accident. He used to pee his pants every time he had a glass of milk and that was why we cut it out in the first place.
So it has been three days so far and he has been on an emotional roller coaster. He is super itchy with eczema spots on his torso and has been licking non food things.... I could hear him though from the bedroom this morning and in the past 24 hours he has been talking non stop. He has a pretty significant speech delay and doesn't talk a lot usually. He is even phrasing things in a completely different way.
So we see movement... this is a good thing. Usually in my experience this means that we are on the right track.
The only scary part for me is that even though I have always known that he shouldn't have dairy I was terrified to cut it out. He has real sensory issues and has a general aversion to food. He hates sauces or jams or syrups or condiments of any sort so I can't easily add calories. He is significantly underweight. About 36 pounds at just over 5. He is just barely on the growth chart at all. I try try try EVERYTHING for this child. I am already constantly in the kitchen in order to feed everyone a gluten free diet. We buy a vegan meal supplement for 70 bucks a container to make smoothies for him and soup them up to be high calorie. Our grocery budget is over half of our take home pay a month. I am super creative and try everything in the book to make sure he is nourished. The darn kid never stops either , so if we manage to have a good food intake day he manages to burn 4 times the amount running in circles all day.
I am stressed about it.
This weekend I made coconut yogurt from scratch. Delicious by the way!!!!! It got the thumbs down. I even made a frozen yogurt out of it thinking that maybe if it was in ice cream form maybe he would eat it. Nope. I made almond milk ( from scratch) ice cream... also from scratch with dark chocolate pieces ( landlords brought a christmas gift basket yesterday with it in there) and pecans.... finally a winner! He has supplemented every meal with it since! Nothing like using the ice cream maker and hauling in buckets of snow to run it on. Tonight I made a "parmesan" topping with roasted cashews , nutritional yeast , braggs and special salt all ground up and in a shaker. It got eaten! Small sucesses!
So I am praying that part of the underweight issue is because of poor absorption because of the casien issue. Crossing my fingers that he will gain rather than lose weight. I have no idea what we will have to do next. The ped had hinted at tube feeding a year or so back. In the meantime I am trying the best I can to plump this kiddo up a bit. Unlimited nuts and snacks are always there... now I am resorting to putting extra fats and oils in all of his portions. I hope this will work.