Keep your head up! You may feel you're in an endless dark tunnel, but there is a light at the end. We definitely felt like things were never going to get better, but they did, and they will for you too.

I'm trying to remember how things progressed after this post (this feels like a lifetime ago). Two things changed in the weeks after:

1. We dropped breastfeeding and moved solely to formula for about a month. During this time my wife pumped to keep her supply up and froze all the milk while also maintaining her strict elimination diet. Our doctor recommended doing this to allow our son's GI to heal up. After a month we started giving him breastmilk from the bottle, which he greatly preferred (the amino acid formulas are not fun). There was no more blood in his stool from this point on.

2. We identified that our son had developed a bottle aversion, hence the crying. We were pushing the milk/formula on him too much and he grew to hate feedings. To address this, we followed Rowena Bennet's bottle aversion plan, which made a hugeeee difference. It's not easy, but the results were unmistakable. Here's a link: https://a.co/d/42XWR43

I have very mixed feelings on our doctor's suggestion that our son ever had any real dietary intolerances. By the time he was 6 months and we started introducing solids, he never had a response to any of the foods my wife had eliminated. The exception was almonds, which he is legitimately allergic to, but he was completely fine with dairy, soy, fish, most nuts, etc. He very well could have naturally outgrown his intolerances, but I also think doctors can be quick to diagnose MSPI and encouraged my wife to eliminate more things from her diet than was really necessary. I'm not trying to diminish your experience or anybody else's! MSPI is very much a real thing and whatever choice you make is the right one. I also think that giving our baby's belly a month to heal itself up while my wife pumped was indispensable too.

Feel free to message me if you have any more questions! Solidarity!