Newly diagnosed allergies

Thought it might be timely to post in this thread. My 12 month old daughter was diagnosed this week with mild dairy, soy and nut allergies. Even though it's only mild, the specialist & dietician have recommended that we remnove all traces of these products from her diet, in order to increase the likelihood of her growing out of them.

I'm still in shock and feeling quite overwhelmed with it really. Mostly I worry that she won't grow out of it and will miss out on eating so many nice foods. The major change is switching to neocate advanced formula, which she's not keen on. I've taken to mixing it with her old formula, which is the only way I can get her to drink it. Will try and fully wean her onto it over the next week. Waiting for the SA to come through in the meantime.

I went looking for some alternative foods for her yesterday, and so many packets say 'may contain traces of nuts', it was really depressing. Any suggestions about useful websites, resourses for food ideas would be most appreciated.

Hi, Spencer is allergic to diary, egg and peanuts (but is off all nuts on advice of allergy paed) he also can't tolerate strawberries or parsnips.

He has been on neocate since 4 months and has just this week switched to the advanced stuff. It took about a week to move from regular formula to the neocate because of the taste but we did what you are doing and mixed it with the old formula in increasing doses until he was fully on it. If that doesn't work you can add a couple of drops of vanilla essence to it and then wean off of that.

Spencer was recently retested as he had a big ezcema flare up and his diary allergy has all ready improved since he was last tested at 12 months and the doc now thinks that by age 2 he may tolerate dairy in baking, we are also allowed to trial egg in baking now (or once the ezcema has gone anyway, otherwise I won't know if he reacts). His reactions were also quite small ones.

Honestly it does get easier. I pretty much home make all of Spencer's food and their are a few select things I buy that are processed. Most of these are either from the organic shop (I find organic stuff also tends to be free of high allergen foods) and I also find that signature range and homebrand are good for not putting tons of crap in their foods. We were quite lucky though in that we don't eat foods with preservatives, flavours, colours or any other thing with a number after it. So that already means most of the supermarket has been eliminated to start with.

Also most of the "good" foods you are talking about aren't good when you think about. Yoghurt is full of sugar, ice cream is hardly healthy, neither is butter etc. If she does need to be off those foods for longer their are lots of alternatives you can make with rice milk and she could have fruit sorbet instead of ice cream. You just need to get a little inventive.

I got children with milk, nuts and soy allergies as well many other allergies

So feel free to ask about products you want....like butter

Also have you heard about this website?
www.mfd.co.nz contain all list of product are free from.. just click onto "search" then type in what you are looking for or leave blank and tick boxes that you want free from to get list of products. It has made my shopping much easier but had to find it first on the shop floor although as supermarket may not got everything on the list. Often they can order your product in for you.
HTH

Edited by soph