Milk Allergy

Mere started developing symptoms similar to those she had when we found out she was allergic to eggs (and this time, she even had a small rash on her back). We looked through her food journal and didn't really see any pattern, and we knew she hadn't really had anything new. We started wondering if it was Milk...

We took her to the pediatrician, and she seemed to think that it could very well be a milk allergy. Mere already had a follow-up appointment with the pediatric allergist at the end of the month, so she suggested that we move up the appointment. She also said to try switching her to soy products to see if we could see any improvements.

We switched her to soy...she loved the soy yogurt right away, but it took her a while to get used to the soy milk. But we could tell a difference almost immediately. And her appetite increased right away. She never ate very much before, but after switching to soy it was like we couldn't keep her full! I was so glad she was eating more!! :)

I re-scheduled her appointment with the pediatric allergist for April 10th. Matt was off for Good Friday, so I took off to spend the day with them. It turned out to be a very yucky day! We weren't able to get outside to do anything fun...and actually we were kinda glued to the TV for a while keeping an eye on the weather (there were tornado watches and warnings all afternoon).

Here's a few pics of Mere playing at Dr. Partridge's office:

Dr. Partridge decided to start off with the scratch test (for milk only). She said if it turned out that it wasn't milk, we could discuss doing more testing.

When they do the scratch test, we have to make sure she doesn't touch the places for 15 minutes. Trying to hold the hands of a toddler for 15 minutes is so hard!!! I was so glad that Matt was there with us this time, because last time I had to do it on my own. Here's a few pics of Mere while we were waiting on the results:

We were right for a second time...poor baby!! :( It just makes me so sad for her that she can't enjoy things that other people enjoy!! And the older she gets, the harder it gets!!! The doctor is very hopeful that she will outgrow them both. We caught them both very early, and we are completely eliminating them from her diet. We have to be very careful in reading food labels, which we have been all along. We were given a listing of things to avoid...casein, butter, cheese, pudding, yogurt, lactulose, and the list goes on. Casein is the hard one...it's in a lot of soy products. We thought we had found some cheese that was ok for her to have, but it has casein in it. She's been asking for cheese, so we're gonna have to search harder.