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At a routine checkup, my son’s pediatrician said she was concerned about how pale he looked.
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More tests showed he had severe anemia, which required iron transfusions.
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It turned out that he had drunk too much cow’s milk – almost double the recommended amount.
“The good news is your son doesn’t have leukemia!”
My toddler’s pediatrician was the first to call on Friday morning to deliver this news. During a recent checkup, the doctor had expressed great concern about Johnny’s pale complexion, which I had always attributed to the fact that he lived in the Pacific Northwest and was the product of two very Irish parents.
He underwent a full blood count, the results of which indicated a severe iron deficiency. His hemoglobin level was between 4.5 and 5.6; the normal range for someone his age was 10.9 to 15. His anemia was so bad that he had developed an associated heart murmur.
I was surprised when the doctor said she was secretly afraid of leukemia, but that’s how sick Johnny looked. Fortunately, the culprit was not blood cancer, but cow’s milk. He immediately received his first iron transfusion and received his second and last the following week. He also started taking iron supplements every other day.
Many people don’t know this, but too much milk can be a bad thing
Johnny was born in the first year of the pandemic, so my stress level was high for a long time. I waited for my older son’s inevitable autism diagnosis and adjusting to a new city after an interstate move. So when Johnny started drinking cow’s milk at age 1 and never wanted anything else, I didn’t try to correct his behavior. I kept pouring to keep the peace.
Johnny drank about 30 to 40 ounces of milk a day, much more than the 16 to 24 ounces recommended for his age group. I didn’t know that calcium can suppress iron absorption, so any iron that got into his body would have been immediately trampled by excess dairy.
I didn’t think milk could affect him like that
Sure, he was always in a sour mood, never seemed well rested, and had almost constant breakdowns. I thought maybe he had started the terrible twos ahead of schedule, or that he was becoming an overly spoiled youngest child, or that he, too, was on the autism spectrum.
Johnny had been a baby with cramps, so I found myself googling if toddler cramps can recur. I suspected he drank too much milk, which made him feel full, but I didn’t realize that excessive intake could do so much damage. After all, the US has been pushing milk consumption for decades – I grew up seeing “Got Milk?” advertisements on TV and billboards, and my dad used to encourage me to drink a lot of it to get taller and stronger.
Johnny’s hematologist said most parents don’t know that too much milk can be a problem. We see our children every day, but infrequent visitors, such as a doctor or a family member, can notice worrying physical changes in our little ones.
The hematologist also told me that most children are completely different people after recovering from anemia, which can cause headaches, weakness, fatigue and a host of other ailments. Johnny constantly felt like crap, but he couldn’t tell me. My husband and I regret assuming Johnny was moody when his heart was literally upset.
Johnny recovered from his heart murmur and anemia after a month and a half of treatment. Everyone in our lives saw an immediate improvement in their character. Now he has the willingness and energy to eat, smiles at everyone he sees, and wakes up talking eagerly to his stuffed animals – a stark contrast to when he started and ended his days in tears.
For the first time in his little life, I feel like I’m finally getting to know the real Johnny.
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