Finger foods for multi-allergic baby

[TiffanyToothache]

Hi - wonder if anyone helpful could suggest some finger food ideas for my 10 month old DS who is allergic to milk, egg, banana, strawberry, blueberry, soya . .. .probably other things too (we're limiting his diet at the moment) BUT he won't be spoon fed unless he's starving!

We started out with BLW and shot ourselves in the foot really, as it would be so easy to have a stash of convenience baby foods in the cupboard for when he can't eat what the rest of us are having at meal times - but he won't touch mushy food.

I do spread it on bread / melba toast / breadsticks and stir into pasta but could use some inspiration. We currently offer for snacks:

rice cakes
apple
pear
organix biscuits/rusks etc(don't like giving these too often due to sugar levels)
bread / toast/crumpets - spread with sunflower margarine (too scared to try jam due to strawb / blueberry rxn)
cucumber


For mealtimes he has whatever he can that we're having eg meat / chicken / pasta / potatoes - supplemented if necessary from the snacks list


It's all a bit dull for him I think . . .

[EldonAve]

are you seeing an allergy dietician?

[TiffanyToothache]

Hi - we have seen paed consultant - referred / waiting now to see dietician :)

[topiarygal]

Hi
Tricky isn't it - but - not to sound too negative here, at least you've got no gluten allergy - I reckon you're not going badly compared to some

[TiffanyToothache]

YES! Have no idea what on earth I'd give him if he had a gluten allergy too! Although, I do think his diet is a bit "wheat heavy" IYKWIM

[Likeaninjanow]

How about oat cakes & pate? Some pate doesn't have milk in it, Morrison's does a Brussel's pate which is ok. Alternatively Holland & Barrett do one.

Also, slices of ham, carrot sticks, raisins (or is he too young for them, it's hard to remember?).


I'll watch with interest, as we're not great with the variety in snacks either.

[gingergaskell]

My son had multiple food allergies and up to one year old our specialist's recommendation was to only have green veg, rice, potato, apple or banana!
We were in HK at the time, my specialist when we moved to the UK {when he was 10 months old} was quite surprised by taking such extreme action, so I'm not recommending this!

What I did want to say though that what I realised, was that actually although it's really frustrating as a parent being so limited, actually for the child themselves it's fine.
Kid's like repetition, until a year old, food is just for them to get an idea of texture etc, so don't worry about staying with the foods he knows, it's not dull for him I promise. :)

Anyway more practically here are some more suggestions:

Any of the 'safe' vegetables {root and green ones are the safest} make great finger food snacks. For the 'soft ones' like cucumber or pepper cut into sticks, for 'hard' ones like carrot grate them. For things you might usually cook like brocolli, lightly steam {and then cool} them to make them soft.

Base snacks around rice or oats.
So make rice balls, or oat bars that sort of thing.

Pizza 'swirls' are good since you can't have cheese. Use puff pastry, spread with tomato paste and then spinkle finely cut mushroom, pepper the usual pizza stuff, as long as he can eat it on top. Roll the pastry up and then cut into scrolls.
Cook in the oven until browned / flaky.
These freeze well, so if he likes them you can do a big batch and bring them out.

Look at other cuisines that don't use dairy for idea, such as Chinese and Indian.

Finally BLW doesn't restrict you to finger foods. Get him a long sleeved / all encompassing bib and let him eat things like risotto, and pasta with sauces, porridges, any food he can tolerate really with his fingers too. Makes a dreadful mess, but they love eating food this way, and will give you / him a lot more options.

Good luck. :)

[niccibabe]

Don't worry too much about not taking the baby convenience foods. We did BLW until we were on holiday and couldn't get much food that wasn't extremely salty - so we trained our DC1 to eat the convenience stuff - which was accepted finally due to nothing else being offered. Now aged 2, it's difficult to get more solid foods eaten, other than toast. So we also shot ourselves in the foot - just differently.

We had used e.g. mashed potato etc for BLW - just let DC1 get on with it with hands or a succession of pre-loaded spoons. So long as we didn't hold the spoon up to DC1's mouth it was okay.

Pasta barely coated in sauce worked well as finger foods - try to vary the pasta shapes a bit, so that your DS will probably take several kinds. Try non-wheat pastas for a change.

Roast veg sticks e.g. sweet potato, potato wedges, carrot

Handfuls of couscous, bulgar wheat (which isn't actually wheat) - you can add harissa or salad dressing to bind it a bit. Waitrose / Tesco finest Mediterranean Couscous salads are v popular here and good for picnics.

If your DS can eat fish - there's always the fish finger.

Chicken legs with not much meat left on them are fun for BLW - you get the lion's share and take out the pin bone - then DS can have a chomp at it - good for teething and photos

However, if you are keen to use the convenience foods, the first ones our DC would take were the squeezy packet things, e.g. Ella's Kitchen Chick-Chick-Chicken - I think not being able to see the mush helps, and if you let the child just suck it out of the packet they have control of the container.