trial of allergy food at 2

[yawningmonster]

DS has been dairy free until now having reacted to it through my breast milk. Paed's want us to trial it now he is 2. How did you go about your trials.. a little at a time eg as an ingredient in other food or full on trial say a glass of milk. How did your toddler accept the food? Are the reactions likely to be the same as previously?
TIA

[livelife]

would seriously only put drip of milk on the inside of his lip to start. look for rash, blister etc before proceeding. don't give a full food, drink - really shameful they have told you to do this at home!! If drip of milk ok, move onto half teaspoon after half hour. maybe best to do near casualty in case of big reaction. I am worried about this! what was the previous reactions?

[gigwig]

I am amazed you are doing this at home - really should be done in hospital. I would caution you against doing it at home in case of a reaction.

In my experience, they start by taking a blood test to check the antibody levels. Then if they are low enough they bring you into hospital to do a food challenge. They start by dropping a few drops of milk onto the skin on the arm then seeing if any reaction, then it moves onto a drop on the lip as described by livelife.

Where are you in the country?

[DrJo]

Is this an allergy or an intolerance - what were hte symptons that made you take him off dairy in the first place? An intolerance can be tested at home safely -Just add a little mild or yoghurt as an ingredient and see if he can tolerate that - It is better to just start off with a small amount, since then you will know he can cope with it cooked even if you then find he can't deal with large quantities

[yawningmonster]

He started to projectile vomit after each feed, they did a number of tests and said he had a cows milk protein allergy and to remove all traces from my diet and not to give it to him until 2. As it was not deemed a serious reaction we have been told that we can trial it at home but they were pretty vague about how best to proceed. They do think that it was a result of abdominal surgery at 3 weeks of age that he couldnt digest the protein and therefore it caused an allergic reaction.

[threebob]

Make more of a fuss - our GP said we could do the food trial at Christchurch hospital - but his skin test results were so awful at 2 and 3 that he still hasn't had any food trials.

If you do proceed with your home trial I would do it in the hospital car park! Some cooked milk protein to start (for instance a bit of scone or bread with milk powder in it).

I would work up to actual milk via just about everything else that contains milk. Ds still can't handle milk, but can have a milk arrowroot biscuit for instance.