Ice Cream is IN!

E completed his allergy panel last week, and while he still tested positive for a skin reaction to milk protein, he had no reaction when we tried milk in his oral challenge. I am thrilled to report that he was able to consume four large spoonfuls of plain ice cream without any kind of reaction.

Dairy was our last major food allergy to overcome, and I'm not going to lie, it was the biggest one. Of course, that's what I said when we got the OK from the doctor to give him wheat. Then eggs. But I've really been looking forward to the day when he can have dairy. It means that he can eat pizza and ice cream. It means I can go to a regular grocery store and get regular yogurt. He can go to a birthday party and not be the weird kid who doesn't have any cake and brings his own food.

Now we have a different challenge, which is untraining him from staying away from all these foods he's learned not to touch the last 4 years. I daresay he is probably the only kid who says that real ice cream is "slimy and weird". And he's literally afraid of cheese.

But I welcome this new problem. It's a lot less stressful than the days when I worried about lunch snack trades causing a trip to the hospital. And really, it's just a variation of a picky eater, albeit a really strange case where the child would prefer broccoli on rice over pepperoni pizza. Yup, it's a good problem to have.

Eggcelent News!

The drought is over. Let the baked goods rain down upon my son and all his little friends! We took E to the allergist for his oral challenge for eggs. And I am thrilled to say that he was able to eat an entire hard boiled egg (although it took him 2 hours to eat it under the watchful monitoring of a nurse) with only a small rash to show for it.

The allergist gave us the OK to introduce small amounts of egg into his diet. This means that cake and cookies and all the other stuff he will spend his adult life trying to resist are now open to him (might as well get a chance to enjoy them now while he can, right?). In fact, he has recommended that we feed him eggs 2-3 times a week in small amounts to build up his tolerance.

This avid baker of a mom could not be more thrilled!

So to commemorate this milestone, I'll be making some cupcakes for him to bring to his Halloween potluck at school (decorated like Spider-Man to go with his costume). The only thing is, he doesn't like frosting (I've never let him have any since I never know if it has milk in it), so while his friends will get the masked Spidey cupcakes, he'll be enjoying his unfrosted Peter Parker cupcake.

Being -Free: A Guide to Coping with Allergies

Because of E's numerous food allergies (let's review: dairy, egg, nuts, mildly allergic to wheat, used to be allergic to fish too), I've ended up being a resource to my friends whose kids subsequently also develop food allergies or sensitivities. I'm bummed to hear other people tell me their child can't have milk / soy / gluten /nuts /name your food here, and I wish in a way that I was the only one dealing with this because it's a crummy situation, let's just be honest about it.

That being said, when I thought about how things have gone with E's diet, it's not the colossal pain and source of emotional angst that it used to be. Somehow, we've adjusted to it pretty well. So I thought it might be useful for those of you who are trying to do the -free diet to read what's worked well for us.

Eating Out Is Bad
Okay, if not bad, at least a pain. Eating out is never easy because waiters don't always know if the food you order contains the offending food. Heck, even the cooks don't always know because processed foods can contain trace amounts of stuff you just wouldn't expect in that food. And it's not just going to restaurants, it's going to people's houses, amusement parks, and birthday parties, too. E always gets a big bowl of fruit salad and a small bag of gummi bears when he goes to a birthday party; he never partakes of cake, and that's just how it's always been. So if you want to eat out, make sure you're bringing something along for your child that you KNOW is safe and that he'll enjoy.

Substitute Foods Are Great
There are a lot of options out there these days: soy milk for regular milk, non-dairy margarines for butter, rice-based pasta instead of wheat. You can swap a lot of these substitute foods without really a noticeable difference in taste or texture. A few items that have passed our discriminating palettes (that being mine, not E's since he has never had the original to compare to):

• Soy Yogurt - Whole Soy is my favorite brand; it's thick and creamy and full of fruit flavor. I especially like the lemon and mango/apricot. Silk can be good, too. Its texture is like Yoplait, but I find it cloyingly sweet (E loves their blueberry soy yogurt).
• Rice-Potato-Soy Pasta - I forget the name brand, but check out your closest Whole Foods for a selection of gluten-free pastas. I've found that ones that have a combination of grains has better texture than the ones that are all one grain (quinoa, rice, etc), which tend to be mushy unless cooked perfectly. Also check out soba, made from buckwheat (which is gluten-free and wheat-free despite the name) - but beware, some soba has wheat in it, so look for the kind that's 100% buckwheat.
• Double Rainbow Blueberry Soy Ice Cream - It has such great blueberry flavor that you can't really taste the soy flavor too much.
• Sorbet - for those of you who can't deal with the soyness of soy ice cream, enjoy some sorbet or fruit juice popsicles.

Not All Substitute Foods Are Great
The worst offenders:

• Gluten-free bread - any brand, I guarantee you it will be an affront to all that is beautiful and delicious about bread. It is the gluten that imparts bread with that great chewy, light, delightfully pillow-soft texture. Forget about bread and carbo-load on something else (potatoes, rice, corn, there's lots of options).
• Gluten-free, dairy-free, and egg-free cake/cookies - I hate to break it to you, but you're generally going to pass up the bakery section of your grocery store. Leaving 1 one of those 3 things can still result in a tasty treat, even 2 out of 3 can be a winner, but not having any of those things in your baked good - you'll just have to learn to get over it. What you can get is usually not worth the calories anyway. As an alternative, try gluten-free, vegan fruit pie.
• Fake cheese - pretty self-explanatory.

Forget About Imposters
After all that talk about substitute foods, which have their place, we find that it's just much tastier not to pretend. Why eat fake yogurt for breakfast when you can have a real hash brown? Sometimes when you go on a -free diet, you spend so much time worrying about what you can't eat that you forget about the great things you still can eat. Just a reminder for you:

Breakfast foods:

• Hash browns
• Rice crispies cereal (great with some freeze-dried berries and soy milk)
• Corn flakes
• Sausage (check ingredients to make sure there's no dairy)
• Bacon
• Fruit

Snacks:

• Potato, corn, or tortilla chips
• Popcorn
• Fruit

Generally speaking, Asian meals will have the most options for gluten-, dairy-, and egg-free dishes, especially Vietnamese cuisine, which is largely rice-based.

Leading By Example
The most important aspect of a successful -free diet is your outlook. The way you react to your child's diet will become your child's reaction. Act as if your child is being deprived and he will feel like he's being deprived. Sometimes it's the hardest thing for a parent to act like being allergic to something is like having straight hair or brown eyes - it just is part of who your child is. For me, it was so hard not to feel like I've lost out on something I always imagined myself doing with my kids: baking cookies together or making pancakes together on a Sunday morning.

At the same time, it's imperative to help your kids to understand that they do have an allergy. As much as I'd like to hope that I'll always be there to keep E from the things he can't eat, it's not realistic. He needs to be able to tell his teachers, his friends, or his friends' parents what will make him sick. E now is able to tell people, "I can't have eggs", "no cows milk for me", "I can't have cake, thank you". And he doesn't feel bad about it (usually his follow-up statement is, "can I have some gummi bears instead?").

The trick is to strike the balance between being clear what foods he is allergic to and not making a big deal of it. A few lessons we've learned along the way:

• Try to have the whole family follow the same diet, at least when you are with your child. Don't groan, if your kid can't eat pizza, is it fair for you to munch away on a slice in front of him? Meet your pizza needs when you're at work, and enjoy family dinners that you can enjoy as a family. You will probably actually start eating healthier for it.
• Don't freak out if your child is putting a foreign food near his mouth (parents whose kids get anaphylactic reactions get some slack on this one). You don't want your child to fear food. Instill in your kids the habit of not eating new foods when they're not with you, and teach them why.
• Carry an epi-pen and Benadryl (children's oral suspension) with you when you go out to eat, just in case.
• Read all food labels and try not to keep dangerous foods in the house.
• Try to discourage your kids from being picky eaters (an uphill battle for some parents, I know). But the thing is, if your child can’t take in entire groups of food (dairy, gluten products, soy, etc), then it’s more difficult to ensure they have a balanced diet. Teach your kids to embrace the foods they can eat so that they get variety and balance in their diet. The best way to do this is not to be picky yourself – suck it up and be an adult about eating your green vegetables or fish or whatever you dislike eating.

I’m sure there are plenty of other tips that I’ve missed or haven’t picked up on yet. So if you have a child who has a food sensitivity and/or allergy, please share your strategies on how you cope with his/her dietary restrictions.

Holding Out Hope for Next Year

We finally got E to the allergist for his oral test for dairy, and the verdict is: still allergic. BAH!

He had one teaspoon and refused to have another one. When we tried to get him to drink two teaspoons, he spat out the milk, and where it got on his skin, little red bumps appeared. I guess pizza and real ice cream are all out for another year. The good news is he didn't have any anaphylactic reaction to the milk, so if he gets a little cross-contamination, it isn't a serious threat.

We will be scheduling an oral test for egg within the next few weeks. Hopefully he has better luck with the eggs. Wish us luck!

Fingers, Toes Crossed! The Day Has Come (I Hope)...

The day that I've been waiting for came yesterday! The allergist called to give me E's test results from his allergy panel this year. This is our yearly ritual: we take E to the allergist, he gets the skin test, he gets the blood test, and then we're told his allergies are still there, and it's another year of egg-free, dairy-free, nut-free, limited-wheat eating for my baby.

But this year, the allergist came back with different results. Even though the skin test still showed an allergy to eggs and milk, the blood test came back negative for everything. HALLELUJAH!

What does this mean? It means we get to take E back to the allergist for a dairy test drive some time in the next few weeks. We'll give him a spoonful of milk and wait to see if he has any reaction (with allergist at the ready to administer whatever meds needed in case of a bad reaction). And if that goes well, we can slowly increase the dairy intake to see if he develops any adverse reaction. Then we get to do it again with egg.

I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful for being able to shop at any old grocery store (sorry Whole Foods, you have a great selection of food-sensitive products, but you're expensive!) and not having every trip be two hours (time needed to read every single ingredient label). I'm hopeful for being able to eat out anywhere without having to bring our own food. I'm hopeful for not worrying that my baby might go to the ER because he traded his rice cracker for a friend's Cheez-its at lunch time.

Oh, lucky day, I'm hopeful you've come at last....

Stuff I Love: Simple Treats Cookbook by Ellen Abraham

I have said before that I always imagined baking cookies with my kids as one of those lazy Saturday activities that would become a cherished tradition in our family, and how disappointed I was to find out that both my kids are allergic to eggs and dairy (my son allergic to wheat as well). Well, I need not give up the dream anymore because I found a great cookbook that lets us bake our cake and eat it, too!

What I Love: Simple Treats: A Wheat-free, Dairy-free Guide to Scrumptious Baked Goods by Ellen Abraham. That title says it all, don't you think?

Why I Love It: The recipes are really good and easy to follow. OK, you will never mistake the cookies that come out of this cookbook for a Specialty's cookie, but they are pretty tasty nonetheless. They are at least good enough to fool you into thinking that they are a regular home-baked goodie.

My son's favorite recipe is the oatmeal-raisin cookie. He loves that he gets to pour the raisins into the batter, and he likes to watch them puff up as they bake. Last night, we made the vanilla cupcakes together, and he told me that he wanted to make more to share with his friends at school. The brownie recipe is awesome as well, rich, gooey, and chewy.

In addition to the great recipes, I love that the recipes make nice, small batches (each batch makes about 15 1-ounce cookies), that all the recipes use no refined sugar or saturated fats, and that the nutritional information is included at the bottom of each recipe.

I bought my copy at Amazon.com, and it was $10 well spent.

Coping with Food Allergies

For any parent who can throw a sandwich, a cookie, and an apple into a brown bag and call it lunch for your child, consider yourself lucky. Both my kids are allergic to dairy and eggs. My son is also allergic to wheat, peanuts, and fish. My daughter, while she hasn't been officially tested yet, appears to be allergic to walnuts in addition to the dairy and eggs.

When I was pregnant, I had visions of baking cookies with my kids during holidays, having them lick batter off the spatula, maybe stealing the odd-shaped cookies off the rack before packing the pretty ones in baggies to share with friends. When you have a child who is allergic to wheat, eggs, and dairy, that becomes a much harder vision to realize.

On the more serious side, these food allergies mean a quick trip to the grocery store is at least an hour long, as I read over every single food label. I have episodes of anxiety at the thought of my son starting school, where an innocent trade of his potato chips for a friend's Oreo cookie might mean a trip to the emergency room. When we go out to eat, it's always Asian food, so that he at least can have a bowl of rice if nothing else on the menu is edible for him.

It is exhausting to be so vigilant about every morsel they put in their mouth. And this manifestation of my love and concern for them goes unappreciated. You are nobody's favorite mommy when you have to tell your boy that he can't have a taste of birthday cake or ice cream at his best friend's party.

I know I am not alone out there. Google searches have revealed countless web sites, blogs, and chat rooms devoted to this topic. But it feels like being on an island sometimes, to have to carry this worry over something so basic as eating. I only hope that all the care I put into planning my kids' diet and meals will result in healthier kids down the road.

Still, what I would give just to be able to order a pizza for dinner after a long day's work for once.