My husband and I have been talking a lot about the early days and years of parenthood. And of course those sleepless nights came up. It’s hard for them not to come up since there were so many of them and it was on-going for such a long time. Our poor girl was fighting sleep since she was 2 weeks old. At first it was only her day-time sleep that she was fighting, and we only really started looking into what was causing the problem when she gave up her day-time sleep and it was her night-time sleep that was being affected.
Those of you who haven’t been following the previous sleep related blogs may be interested in checking out
https://yvonnemcevaddy.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/sleep-who-needs-it-anyway/
https://yvonnemcevaddy.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/sleep-glorious-sleep/
https://yvonnemcevaddy.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/sleep-glorious-sleep-part-2/
https://yvonnemcevaddy.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/sleep-glorious-sleep-part-3/
https://yvonnemcevaddy.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/sleep-glorious-sleep-part-4/
Since we’ve discovered that it was E-numbers, aspartame and cheese that were causing the problems, we’ve all been enjoying much more sleep. We have done a lot of research into E-numbers in the last year. There are approximately 500 of them, and they’re not all bad. And some of the worst ones can actually be listed in the ingredients as natural colours or flavours. Even when we buy things that have no artificial colours or flavourings she can sometimes have nightmares. When we do a little research into the natural colour she had consumed the day before we realise that it was an E-number.
When it comes to cheese, she can tolerate sauces that are 2% cheese and she can tolerate E-free cheese and onion crisps. But pizza, cheese sandwiches and cheese flavoured crackers are out, and so is, as we’ve recently discovered – fromage frais. A lot of people find that if they eat cheese late in the evening they have bad dreams. In our daughter’s case, if she eats cheese at any time of the day it will cause her to spend a portion of the night, usually between 2am and 4am, awake and hallucinating.
There are some E-numbers that she can tolerate. We have discovered this through a process of elimination. One of these is Soy Lecithin. She has a limited amount of Soy Lecithin, as we fear that if she has too much of this she will be up at night with bad dreams. We have just discovered that Soy Lecithin is an ingredient in formula milk and some baby foods. So the poor girl has been getting E-numbers at first through my breast milk, and then through formula milk and baby foods. We started giving her cheese when she was 7 months old. And then of course there were all the medicines that she was taking for teething and ear infections etc.
Is it any wonder she had such troubled sleep for so long?
From the research I’ve conducted, Soy Lecithin does not appear to be harmful. In fact it has certain beneficial properties. However, if you have a sensitivity to it, like our girl appears to have, small doses or avoiding it altogether might be wise. More research is needed here – a period of giving her no other additives or preservatives and upping her intake of Soy Lecithin to prove that the formula may in fact have been instrumental in her sleep disturbances.
I will keep you posted. And if anyone has any sleep related stories to share, I am always happy to hear from you.
yvonnemcevaddy 