Becoming Allergy Parents: Part 3. Slowly my daughter improved. But I kept panicking. The stress was non-stop. Every time a meal rolled around, I would panic again. It seemed that dairy, soy, sesame and nuts were in literally everything!
Click here to read Part 1 of our journey: Eczema Babies + Crying All Night.
Click here to read Part 2 of our journey: The Epipen Incident.
After “The Epipen Incident” as we call it, my daughter would only eat Cheerios, baby oatmeal and breast milk.
I was back to nursing an 11 month old 8-10 times a day. She was hungry and fussy and waking up at night to chow down on more milk. I was desperate to get her eating more real food, but she was so scared.
So I called up a dietician and asked for help.
It took a month to get an appointment there too, and in the meantime my mom suggested I talk with my daughter. She’s always been an extremely aware and in-tune baby, so I sat down, cuddled her and talked about the epipen experience. I talked about how it had been scary, but we needed to try eating some new foods. I talked about how we now knew the foods she was allergic to, and it was going to be okay.
Miraculously, she seemed to understand. After that talk, things started improving. She was willing to branch out again from her trusted Cheerios and baby oatmeal. But she’d always feed new foods to Mommy or Daddy before she tried them, just to make sure they were safe.
I don’t blame her. It was all she trusted. After a few days of this, my mom suggested I talk to her about what happened. Even though she didn’t have many words yet, she could understand more than I realized. I talked to her about the allergic reaction and about eating solid foods. I can’t remember what I said, but I remember it helped. That was the turning point when she started to try new foods–but only after she fed a bite to me or her daddy first, to make sure it was safe to eat.
We were mostly limited to purees though, because try as I might, I couldn’t get her to eat many solids. Because we’d had to hold off on real foods for so long, she wasn’t used to the different textures and flavors. She refused anything with protein in it, and was extremely limited in foods she was able to eat anyway. I was so worried she wasn’t getting the nutrition she needed.
Thankfully when I finally got in to see the dietician, it was life changing. She gave me a list of foods to try. She gave me a list of ingredients to look out for when reading food labels, since “soy” and “dairy” can be called many different names on food labels.
Slowly my daughter improved. But I kept panicking.
The stress was non-stop. Every time a meal rolled around, I would panic again. It seemed that dairy, soy, sesame and nuts were in literally everything! My husband brought pretzels home and I saw “sesame” in the ingredients. WHAT?! Same thing with fancy organic tortilla chips we purchased.
I tried to find crackers for my daughter, and it took forever to find some without either soy or dairy in them.
I was still breastfeeding, and so I couldn’t eat dairy, soy, sesame, tree nuts, peanuts or gluten (because I was gluten intolerant). I wanted to cry. I was hungry all the time and didn’t know what to eat! To top it off, I couldn’t find any formula she could wean onto. So I planned to breastfeed until she ate enough solids to be weaned.
The dietician helped me come up with a list of safe foods for my daughter. Then when mealtime came around, I could pull up my list and have different options I could offer her. That helped with my anxiety, but I had a few problems:
- I didn’t know what foods to add to that list.
- My daughter didn’t always like the options on that list.
- The foods on that list weren’t always quick and easy.
Toddler recipe books were full of things like yogurt, PBJ, mac and cheese, and other quick and easy options that my daughter couldn’t eat. So I started looking for recipes and quick snacks that were allergy friendly.
And that’s where this blog comes in.
These are the things I’ve found that have been game-changers. They’ve taken the stress out of mealtime, and calmed my anxiety. They’re my go-to items, and the tidbits of wisdom I’ve gleaned. And I want to share them all with you too.
This blog isn’t professional or medical advice. This is just a compilation of the resources that have helped me.
From one allergy parent to another, this is what helped me make it through. And you can too.
XOXO,
That Allergy Mama
That Allergy Mama 