No Dairy, No Soy, No Eggs..OH MY!

Trying new foods with infants can be a fun experience for the parents as well as the baby. I remember how much fun it was to introduce baby food to Landon and so I could not wait to start with Quinn. It was exciting to see what would be her favorites and what would not be a favorite. At about 4 months we had started to learn that Quinn could not handle formula and could be lactose intolerant. In no way did I think we would have a 2 page list of foods and ingredients we would have to steer clear of. I also believed the best thing for my daughter was breast milk, little did I know that was not the case for our baby girl. As she continued to grow and develop and we continued to introduce new foods we started to see an attitude change in our baby girl. I had no idea what was going on. I blamed teething and possibly growth spurt for her irritability and horrible sleeping patterns. Finally at 7 months mommy and daddy had enough. I took her to the doctor and we expressed our concerns and documented what we saw. We scheduled an appointment with an allergist and off we went. My cousin Andie came with me to help out with the Skin Test. Poor baby girl had to be pricked 12 times to test 10 common allergies. After 12 long minutes only one food had a reaction: EGG YOLK. The allergist was very surprised seeing that this was very uncommon to be allergic to Egg Yolk and not Egg White. That's my baby girl...she needs to be unique! Of course milk and soy did not show up on the skin test. Now I was more confused than ever. He suggested we try Elecare which is an Amino Acid formula that is Hypo Allergic and should really help her out. I asked if we could do half of that and half of breast milk to get her to like the taste. He didn't think that would be a problem. So off to Walgreen's I went to purchase a $45.00 can of formula. We tried out her first feeding and success. Within 24hrs Quinn was still miserable and I was at a loss. I took it upon myself to call Children's and find the first appointment with a pediatric GI. At last the following day Ben and I took Quinn to meet him. After he listened to all that we have done he informed us that Quinn definitely had a cow's milk protein allergy as well as a soy allergy. He informed us that this would not have shown up on her skin test and that since I had not been watching what I ate we had to immediately stop breast milk. Well for a mommy who was dedicated to pumping food for her baby girl I was devastated. I knew I still had tons of frozen milk in our deep freezer. He told us the formula was the best thing for her and she would need to be on an increased calorie intake since her growth was lacking due to all of her feeding issues. So we left with lots of paper work and suggestions for a Milk and Soy Free diet. WOW!! Lots of labels to be read and definitely a frequent shopper at Whole Foods is in my future! Luckily Quinn took the new formula with no problems and she is enjoying her fruits and vegetables that are on her approved list.