So I thought since I had shared a little bit about my health journey, I wanted to share a few things of what I’m doing with Hudson to reinforce a good gut, have little to no food allergens, for him! If you’ve read my blog post all about my health here, you know that I have had to eliminate gluten from my diet and done different things to improve my health. After the many food allergens that we’ve seen in your family that our bodies have.
When we had Hudson I really researched what I could do for him now to help his body not have these same allergens to food and immune system reactions as us. In my research, I had discovered spoonful one. I was amazed. They had studies showing that children introduced to allergen foods at a young age had better chances of not being allergic to them. I was skeptical at first, especially because previously the theory was THE exact opposite.
So I went to Hudson’s pediatrician and asked her thoughts. She told me the same thing. They were finding more and more proof in these studies that younger age exposure to allergens foods was working.
So after so much prayer and way too much overthinking (haha), we dove in and did it!
(We chose to try each food on our own rather than buy the mix-ins from Spoonful One.) The method behind each allergen food is to repeat a food at least 3-4 days alone(no other new foods), and watch for a reaction. (Rash, trouble breathing, lethargy, vomit, tummy troubles, bad diapers, and such)
We started Hudson on a plain food of rice cereal to get him introduced to actual food. Then when he was a solid month into it. We started the allergen foods.
The first ones we did were corn, eggs, and almonds. We did baby snacks that had corn in them and did it constantly. For almonds, I added a very small amount of almond butter to his cereal and mixed it in. And then we did scrambled eggs.
Now one mistake we made was doing a large number of eggs too soon without eating more variety of foods. And this is what I mean. So when we started eggs he had roughly only eaten purées and pretty much only fruits and veggies. And when we did eggs, he did vomit them up. At first, I thought he may have been allergic to them. So after talking with his pediatrician, we held off on them until he was closer to 1. Now, he did eat foods with eggs as an ingredient, just not alone, during that time. When we did re-introduce him to eggs at 12-13 months because he had a broader spectrum of foods he had eaten, he passed with flying colors and I’m happy to say we have not had a problem since.
Alright, so the next few we tried were, peanut butter, other tree nuts, soy, wheat, and salmon.
Honestly, my biggest fear of what he would be allergic to was peanut butter.
I worried about this one, that I would give him just a little and he’d go into anaphylactic shock. (Yeah I’m rolling my eyes here too). And after talking with our pediatrician, she assured me that I had very little to worry about, and that he had a better chance now then not if I waited.(whew) So, we did it. And it was not a problem. He loves his peanut butter.
As for soy, I did soy sauce and other soy products with fried rice and other foods like that to introduce that one. So if you’ve read my health article you know that while I’m not celiac, I have a high sensitivity to gluten. So I was especially excited when he did really well with wheat! And as for wheat, we just started with the organic wheat cereal. For fish, we did fish sauce in Thai food, as well as little bits of salmon. He’s also since had shrimp and clams too. We tried other nuts- very small, l in muffins and such, and I’m so thankful he’s done great with everything.
So the last one we did was milk. This allergen was one I was a little uncertain about because when he was 4 months old I had to go off of dairy. I was breastfeeding and he had slight excema that cleared when I got rid of dairy in my diet. We were able to catch it very quickly and I think that really aided in him not developing a bad reaction to it when introduced to dairy again later on.
What we did was start with adding slight amounts of dairy products to his foods. Such as cheese on potatoes, or sour cream with beans, etc. and he did well. So then we added yogurt. I would put it in his cereal with usually a purée fruit or veggie for breakfast. He reacted well to it and so I slowly added larger amounts of dairy into his diet. And he did great.
So what we do now is I buy organic milk and such and that’s what we drink/cook with in our house. I know that organic is a great way to add milk into a child’s diet because of how it’s processed. So that’s just what we do.
Okay, so, last but not least. Repetitiveness with these allergen foods.
One of the key parts to this method of not being allergic to something is to repeat these foods. So what I did is after we tried everything, bought the crackers from Spoonful one and periodically will have Hudson snack on them. I also put many of them in his diet on a regular basis. We don’t do much seafood and such so the snacks help with reinforcing those. But I make an effort to have him eat these foods enough to stay current with them.
We are now 18+months into using this method and so far we are very, very pleased with it. I know he’s still young and so we’re still in the experimental phase until he’s quite a bit older. But Praise God he’s had 0 allergic reactions so far and man, he makes his mama jealous that he can eat donuts and she can’t. 😂 however, I guess that’s a good thing, right?
Anyways, I hope this was interesting and maybe even helpful to you. I’d really love to know if any of you have tried this exact method with your children. As this is a newer discovery in the early allergen foods, I love hearing how other moms introduced foods, as well as seeing other studies.
Xoxo, Shantel
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