First off, I want to apologise for being MIA lately. It's been kinda crazy around here. My hubby got a new job and we have our house on the market so we can move. Keeping a house show-worthy at all times is a full time job with four kids under seven.
Anyway, our youngest, R, had a birthday last month and it is amazing how fast the time has gone. He is quite the character and has perfected that ear-splitting high pitched shreek that NO child should be able to do!! He is on the verge of walking alone and loves giving kisses! BUT, he is just now starting to eat "table" food. All of my other kids were off baby food way before this age.....but that was before food allergies invaded our lives.
R was born at 39 weeks after a fairly uneventful pregnancy - nothing out of the ordinary for me, just the usual early contractions, and my blood pressure going up and down. R was 8 pounds 7 ounces, a good size baby and he announced his displeasure loudly. The nurses had a hard time with the new electronic records system that the hospital had just switched to eight days previously. It was this same system that prevented records from being lost thirteen days later when the massive EF-5 tornado destroyed the hospital. R and I were released after 24 hours and we began our new normal as a family of six.
R lost the normal weight in the first days, but didn't gain it back like the others. Within a few days he was a skinny little boy, but his pediatrician wasn't concerned. He struggled with nursing, and was deemed a "lazy" nurser by his doc. He was almost one month old before he was back to his birth weight. After two months of fighting nursing, we admitted defeat and put him on formula. And he did better. 24 ounces per day - never any more, never any less. R had the same swallowing difficulties as our other kids, so we thickened all of his bottles. Doc said we could use rice, but I had heard it increased the risk of food allergies, so we went with the commercial thickener that we had used previously.
Just shy of four months, I started weaning R off the thickener and noticed a few things immediately. His reflux (he was on prescription Prevacid) got a little better, and his stools were less stinky and had more form. His stools had always been very rank and very loose, but once again, his doc wasn't concerned. This was about the time that C's allergy tests were being processed. So it got us wondering.....what was it about the thickener...
Cornstarch. Pure cornstarch. I talked with his doc and she agreed that switching formulas would be a good idea - IF we could find one without corn. And we did. We found ONE. Similac Alimentum, but ONLY the Ready to Use liquid. And it was almost $10 for 32 ounces, so essentially $10 per day. We made the switch and R became a totally different child! We were able to take him of his reflux meds and his stools essentially lost all smell!!
And he started gaining weight! He was 85th percentile at birth, 25th at one month, and up to 50th by six months. And he has stayed fairly consistent at 50th since then.
But avoiding corn terrified me!! Avoiding wheat for C was so much easier since wheat has to be labeled, but corn.....is in everything! And under 100 different names!! So I stuck with the easier route - pureed food, introducing one food per week, just to make sure there were no other foods we needed to avoid. Any time I tried to introduce a table food, I knew immediately if there was any corn in it, as he would reflux the rest of the day. So, I just avoided table foods, knowing that inevitably I would have to introduce finger foods.
And the finger foods have been difficult. So many of the first foods had corn, especially those that are gluten free. So I found myself buying glutenful items just for R, while trying to keep them away from C, while keeping the gluten free stuff away from R. Confused?? Yeah, so was I.
So now I am trying to introduce those finger foods. His baby food supply ran out and I decided I was NOT going to buy any more. This week has been his first full week without a jar. He has really enjoyed it, but it still terrifies me. I know he is not anaphylactic, but I know all too well that food allergies can go from nothing to horrible very quickly. (I reacted to pancakes this week - ones that I had eaten many times before - and my tongue swelled up, but that is another story.)
As of tonight, R really likes yogurt and rice krispies (the only gluten free corn free cereal I have found as of yet) and strawberries (this was our trial week for them). Chicken and cheese are okay, but he won't eat much of them. He refuses crackers but loves pancakes, especially ones with chocolate chips.
All in all, we have come a long way since discovering his corn allergy, but we still have a long way to go. Our doc is optimistic that he will outgrow this soon, but the blessing of this is that we are eating healthier.
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