Sunday, February 28, 2010

Wheat and Corn and Eggs...Oh MY!

We have had so much success lately! Kyle has been doing so good on his food trials. He is eating cream of wheat like a champ, and corn (mostly in the form of Kix cereal...which is the best snack for him), and eggs. Oh how he was so excited to eat eggs!
The first time, he ate them it was like he was thinking..."Eggs!! Where have you been all my life??"

In a typical day at 13 months old, he is eating so. much. food. Well, at least for a kid with FPIES he is.

Here is a typical day:

Breakfast
1/4 cup of cream of wheat mixed w/favorite jarred fruit, sometimes a little banana on the side

Lunch
Pasta-Usually around 1/4 of a cup smothered in olive oil and salt and pepper. Yum! We just do the plain old white kind b/c the whole wheat and whole grain I used to buy have oats in them. grrrr. And, we also usually do 1/2 an avocado. Can I tell you how happy it makes me that he loves avocados as much as i do?

Dinner
Egg!! And some delicious Honey Whole Wheat Great Harvest Bread. Love that stuff and it only has 5 ingredients. The kid usually eats a whole egg, and a whole piece of bread.

If you had seen this kid at 8 months when he refused to eat pretty much anything, you would think this was as miraculous as I do. But, then again, I'm a little biased! :)

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Diagnosis

Yes....I tend to be a hypochondriac, but I was RIGHT about one thing. Kyle has FPIES.

I finally got him into an allergist today and we have a PLAN OF ACTION!! YAY!

First off, look what my poor baby had to go through today. I felt so bad for him.

It was awful getting him pricked 17 times, but we learned what he is NOT allergic to, so that was very helpful.

Basically, when you think of a typical food allergy it is what is called an IgE reaction. This usually involves rashes, wheezing, throat closing, etc. The allergist wanted to rule out the possibility to any IgE reactions in him. We tested him for a whole bunch of things and everything was negative, which is consistent with FPIES. The testing always comes back negative unless they also have allergies in addition to the FPIES. So, we got the OK to try eggs, and corn, and continue with wheat. Those three things alone will open a whole bunch of possibilities in Kyle's diet. YAY!

However, since he does have FPIES, he will have to stay away from rice and oats for sure until he is 2. The doctor thinks he may have grown out of the dairy and soy allergies, so he wants to trial giving those to him in his office. This will involve me hanging out in a doctor's office for at least 6 hours to make sure there is no reaction to milk or soy, and most likely hooking up to an IV so that if there is a reaction he does not go into shock which can be typical of an FPIES kid. We are going to schedule doing the dairy trial ASAP.

I'm already dreaming about eating dairy again....yes, I'm still nursing!!

Kyle is also seeing a speech pathologist for his gagging issues. We still have a long road ahead of us to get him to swallow without vomiting, but with these new foods we've gotten the OK on, I'm actually a little more excited to see him eat...and most importantly to see him grow!! He hasn't grown since about 9 months old, so we've been super worried. But, today, I'm feeling a little more positive.