My infant son is allergic to EVERYTHING

[midnight armadillo]

Allergy testing on my 11 month old sweet little boy showed he is allergic to:

oatmeal, corn, peanuts, almonds, cashews, mango, carrots, milk, soy, chicken, beef, chocolate (!!!), and mold. With luck and little exposure he will outgrow some of these in a few years. We hope.

WTF are we supposed to feed this kid? ARGH. It looks like there's a lot of eggs and fish in his future.

[mainegreen]

1. Corn? Ung, that's a hard one to avoid as you get older.

Here's hoping he does outgrow those!

[Critters2]

2. I feel for him.

If I were allergic to oatmeal and chocolate, I'd have trouble finding a reason to crawl out of bed in the morning.

There are a lot of protein sources you have to avoid. That'll be hard for a growing child.
Is your doctor working with you to design a diet? Keep in mind that whole grains contain good amino acids, and the grain quinoa is a complete protein. Try substituting rice milk for soy or cow's milk. If he's allergic to peanuts and soy, are other legumes safe? Beans are good sources of protein and healthy fats.

I wish you all the best with this challenge!!

[LeftyMom]

3. some ideas:

rice (by itself, as rice milk)
offbeat grains like quiona and amaranth
wheat-based protein foods like seitan (use it anywhere you'd use chicken)
potatoes
as many green veggies as possible (never a bad idea)

You're very fortunate that he's not wheat allergic as well. That's a really rough one. Dairy is pretty easy to sub or avoid, as are meats, please let me know if you need help with either.

I would suggest not going nuts with fish as it's often very polluted with mercury, other heavy metals and pesticides, flame retardants and other environmental pollutants. Do get a list of the safest fish for your area, (check the monterey bay aquarium website) and stick with the safest options.

The chocolate thing sucks though- I had a friend growing up who had a very rare autoimmune disease, unfortunately he died as a teenager as a result, and he could not have any chocolate as it would result in his body swelling up on one side. He was able to have lots of other candies though, which helped.

[Midlodemocrat]

4. Take heart. My now 16yo was diagnosed with severe allergies

as a child and has outgrown all of them. In fact, she outgrew most of them by the time she was 4.

She couldn't have dairy, strawberries, apples, peanuts, tomatoes, etc., etc.,

Talk about not being able to feed her! It was awful. She also had seasonal allergies which made things even worse.

The only thing she hasn't outgrown is a penicillin allergy.

[eyepaddle]

5. Wow, that's a pretty big list, but

As LeftyMom indicates there are alternatives--they take some digging but they are out there. I'm not allergic to all nuts--but I'm allergic to enough of them that I generally avoid them all; mango probably won't be an issue, all dairy really jacks up my system (I'm pretty sure it plays a role in my occasional bouts of pancreatitis). So, believe it or not you can find stuff to feed the little guy--I certainly never go hungry!

It looks like pork (as well as the many fine veg alternatives) are in play--and as a side result of this, you are probably gonna turn into one hell of a good cook figuring out how to avoid all these booby traps and still not get boring.

But for right now, :hug:

[midnight armadillo]

6. Thanks for the suggestions!!!!

I had completely forgotten about quinoa as a good protein source. I will put seitan on the shopping list and try it out.

For fish we typically stick with tilapia (my wife is still nursing him) since it's a vegetable-fed freshwater fish.

Yes, I am very glad that eggs and wheat are not allergens for him, ditto for rice. His older brother has a mild egg white allergy that we're hoping he's outgrown (at 3.5 years).

One problem is that he has bad acid reflux and apparently also has bad adenoids, which lead to a lot of texture and swallowing troubles. Well, we'll conquer those too I guess. The poor little guy, he already has 2 physical therapists for torticollis as well, and two hospitalizations over the winter has dropped him from 50th to 20th percentile for weight.

On the plus side, he's super cute, is very smart, and has an amazing affinity for music. :D

Can anyone recommend a good (i.e. not all-tofu ;)) vegetarian cookbook? I suspect we're going to need one.

[UncleSepp]

7. Try lamb for animal protein, sheep and goat milk

Ask the allergist first, of course! Try a halal butcher if you don't find nice lamb regularly in your grocery - around here, they tend to have a better selection of it. On a day when he hasn't had anything else he's allergic to, try a little bit of goat milk. Some kids who have allergies to cow's milk can have goat's milk just fine.

Your allergist will probably suggest keeping a food diary, and that you keep track of what you have fed him when and how much, as well as what his reaction is. You'll be able to budget out what foods he can have, being mindful of food combinations. There will be a lot of standing in the kitchen looking at this diary with a spoon in your hand saying "Well, he already had corn and peanuts, so how am I going to fix spaghetti without any tomatoes??" :-)

My nephew had similar allergies, as did my sister and I. We all grew up on lamb and rice and goat's milk, like so many puppies. All of us got much better over time.

[Momgonepostal]

8. My sympathies...

At age four, my daughter was diagnosed with allergies to mold, soy, peanuts, egg white, citrus and wheat, so I am very sympathetic to your situation. The good news for us is that she retested at age 7 and is now just allergic to mold and peanuts. Hearing that made for one of the happiest days of my life!

Do you have access to a Trader Joes or a good health food store? The soy AND milk is tricky, but you might find rice milk to be a good alternative. My husband even likes it and he's from a dairy family.

There are several Yahoo groups devoted to food allergy cooking, so you might get some help from there.

There is also a good magazine called Living Without, that has good recipes and general lifestyle suggestions.

Can your son have turkey? There are a lot of good turkey products out there.

The biggest stinker about this is that you're probably find you have to make a lot more things from scratch.

Can I ask, did you do a blood or a skin test?

[midnight armadillo]

10. Scratch test

It wasn't the real scratch test done with the needle where they jab every spot, but the quicker method that does like 16 in parallel. I remember getting the skin-popping test done where you get mosquito-bite shape injections as a kid. That hurt.

I live near a very large Whole Foods and work near a Trader Joe's so I think I will be an even more frequent WF customer - we already get our 7th Gen "free & clear" detergent and California Baby shampoo there for our super-sensituve skin older son...

[Momgonepostal]

16. It's a big PITA, but it's do-able.

The biggest problem we had was when going to birthday parties, or eating out. It takes a whole 'nother level of planning.

That's great that you are near a TJ's AND a WF. They'll both have products that will be useful. Another thing my daughter liked that TJ's carries is sunflower seed butter. It's very tasty!

Anyway, good luck, and if you or your wife ever have any questions, feel free to PM me.

[Raven]

9. Banana flakes...

I was told to feed my son this years and years ago. The theory then was to keep him away from all offending foods until he was 2. My son turned out not to have any food allergies when he got older but he certainly has pet and airborn allergies.

[vi5]

11. Take heart.....

Not to compare miseries but to unite with you on the food issues, my son is 7 months old and was hospitalized for 5 of those, has a cleft palate, has his tongue stitched to his lip (to prevent asphyxiation), and a tracheostomy in his throat to breath. There's no reason he can't eat food orally but because he's spent most of his young life having people poke, stick, cut, and do things to his mouth/face he refuses to eat that way. Thankfully he has a feeding tube in his stomach that we can feed him formula through. But we'll have a long road ahead getting him to eat anything and it will require weeks and months of feeding/speech therapy.

So good luck to you, because my bottom line point is I feel for you and know it's a rough road when your little one has medical issues and it only gets rougher.

And believe it or not if you've seen what my wife and I have seen over the past 7 months in and out of hospitals and rehab centers and such, you quickly realize that even our struggle is nothing compared to some of the poor children and families out there.

[SKKY]

12. My son has Celiac Disease, which basically means he's alergic to...

...wheat. Do you know how much stuff has wheat? So, I feel you on this one.

[hedgehog]

13. Ahh, memories. My little brother was allergic to everything as a kid.

Fortunately, he wouldn't eat a lot of things, either, so he protected himself. I still remember how he used to get eczema on his poor legs every winter when he was little. He had shots for a long time and either they worked or else he grew out of a lot of the allergies. He started up the shots again a few years back when he developed asthma as a adult.

I should say, he was diagnosed with asthma as an adult. The first time my 18 month old son had an episode of asthma, I only took him to the doctor because he had been coughing for several days and he was too young for any OTC remedies. I didn't think his cough was anything special; both my brothers used to cough alike that all winter when we were kids!

By the way, we live in a house built c1870, have dogs and cats and a bunch of chickens and live on an old dairy farm with 50 acres of pine trees. I can honestly say that I have disproved the theory that allergies are caused by an environment that is too sterile!

What is the proposed treatment? Are allergy shots in the future? Don't take this as advice, but we all swear bu Singulair for allergies/asthma.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

14. If he's allergic to everything, then he's allergic to allergies.

Therefore, he doesn't have any allergies!

See? Problem solved!

[Hell Hath No Fury]

15. Go easy on the eggs...

they are one of the most common food allergens -- you don't want to add to his problem.

I was a newborn with loads of food allergies -- Mom managed to work around most of them until we were able to determine how badly they impacted me. I carried them into adulthood, and even developed a few as an adult.

I decide on which "forbidden" foods I will still eat by what type of reaction I have to it -- is it a mild case of hives or an itchy rash? I will risk that for chocolate, tomatoes, OJ, and dairy. Is it a swollen, itchy throat? I love cantalope, but I never ever eat it because my reaction can be really bad. Luckily I don't have asthma related reactions -- that would really suck.

Food allergies can be a real minefield, especially when dining out in public. There are great sites out there to research allergen-free diets of all sorts. And if your kid is anything like me, use nothing but dye and fragrance free soap when washing him (ixne on the bubble baths!) and his clothes. I was the Rash Queen when I was kid -- Mom would triple rinse my stuff and I still had problems.