Allergen Free Family

It's hard to believe it has been over a year since I have posted anything on here!  Our lives have changed so much in that time.  We have since added a third, beautiful baby boy to our brood.  I thank God all the time that he is mellow and sleeps, because I don't know how we would have been able to handle another challenging baby!

Now that he is here and the other two are older, it seems we have even less time to get things done.  Between working full time and these busy boys, meal planning has become essential, although we still aren't very good at planning ahead.  I have also been trying to get us back on track with eating healthier foods.  We had resorted to quick meals that weren't as healthy as we would like. We have also discovered some, scratch that, MANY dietary issues with the 2 older boys, which has made eating a very challenging task in our home.  I have always had concerns about my oldest and his skin issues and the middle and his belly issues- hard belly, STINKY gas, and sporadic, raunchy poops.  After having some labwork done, it was discovered that both of them were having issues with dairy, wheat and gluten, eggs, coconut, soy, peanuts, and almonds.  That means no ice cream, yogurt, all of their snacks, peanut butter, eggs at breakfast, and our almond milk.  All of the things they love.

We also have a now 7 month old son.  He has been such a mellow baby from day 1.  Woke 1-2 times a night right from the get-go, pretty easy going, pretty easy to settle.  He began taking longer and longer to settle, and then went from waking once per night, to 3 or more times per night, and was very difficult to settle. He was becoming more and more gassy and seemed very uncomfortable.  After changing my diet, the baby settled... sporadic gassiness, settles better overall, but especially only wakes once per night and is back in his bed in 15 minutes!  I never really thought changing my diet like that would have such an effect on my milk.  He only has fruits, veggies, and rice, and "meltable" gluten free snacks to practice chewing!  From my experiences with the older boys, I will definitely be delaying introduction of gluten and dairy products until he is 2 and hopefully avoid some of the issues we've had with the older boys!

We have spent the last 5 weeks finding alternatives, but mostly telling them "I'm sorry, we can't eat that!"  That is the hardest part of this whole change, telling them they can't eat the foods they like, and getting them to understand that.  For the most part they have been very good about not having melt downs over it, but finding alternatives they like has proved quite challenging.  I find recipes, and while I usually enjoy them, the boys are not quite as flexible!

I plan to slowly share some of the allergen free  foods with you that meet the taste standards of our family.  I have allowed small sneaks of things with coconut since their reaction to that food was high, but I think the other foods they reacted to were more of the culprit.