Just having a moan and stuggling for food inspiration as it transpires that DS can't have goats milk/cheese any more

[mawbroon]

DS has been intolerent to dairy since a dreadful stomach bug almost 2yrs ago.

He was doing great on goat's milk, but then his poos started going soft and yellow again.

I have cut out all the goat milk/cheese etc and he is now doing proper poo again which leads me to believe that he has now developed an intolerence for the goats' stuff too.

So far, we have tried Cheezly cheese substitute and tbh it is rank, although ds seems happy enough to eat it. I got a powdered "cheese" sauce mix which is also dairy free. I made it with soya milk, and it too was disgusting. Obviously I have bigged it up as delicious to ds, and he seems quite happy eating it, but I feel so sorry for him eating this vile stuff!

He is also allergic to egg, so I am guessing that I need to start looking at vegan stuff otherwise I am going to get stuck in a rut with his food.

Can anyone inspire me with ideas?

Boo hiss.

[Doozle]

So can he eat meat etc? How old is he?

I feel for you - when DD had a dairy intolerance, it was tough. Agree the cheezly stuff is not nice. But if he seems happy with it, then go with it.

Does he have alpro yoghurts? Also there was a dairy free cream cheese that was nice. The name is escaping me right now but it'll come back. I used that a fair bit to give a creamy consistency to pasta sauces as well as using it to spread on sandwiches/crackers.

[mawbroon]

Yes, he can eat meat, but he doesn't really seem to like it.

He is 3.7yo just now.

He eats soya yogurts, oat milk (used to have rice milk, but we cut down drastically after finding out the arsenic thing), he likes cashew nuts and peanut butter. I also found a milk/egg free pesto in the free from section. And I recently found out about Mayola egg free mayo.

I think he does ok tbh, but he hardly eats meals IYSWIM, more a collection of bits and pieces!

[Doozle]

Gosh yes the egg thing makes it twice as complicated!

The name of that cream cheese was Tofutti, I'm pretty sure it's egg free. They also do cheese slices which are nicer than the cheezly ones.

We had the Pure spread for toast and sandwiches (or even olive oil on toast). You've probably heard of that.

Will he eat pasta, rice, potatoes, chicken, fish, veg, fruit and so on?

I had a chat with a NHS dietician and found it very useful and reassuring. Have you seen one already?

DD definitely had a bits and pieces attitude for ages!

[jabberwocky]

Almond milk?

Sheep's cheese? Although he may have just as much trouble with that unfortunately.

[CantSleepWontSleep]

Awww mawbroon, I didn't realise he still has a problem with milk.

Tell us what he does like to give us a starter for 10, and we'll come up with some more ideas for you.

Do you eat with him, so we need family friendly ideas?

Do you cook much with coconut milk? I'm finding it v useful at the moment.

[tatt]

have you tried him with probiotics and/or lactase or reduced lactose milk? Probiotics will help restore good bacteria to his gut and the use of lactase helped my OH recover from "temporary" lactose intolerance that lasted well over a year. He can now have moderate amounts of dairy without lactase.

You may not need to be vegan, much easier for him to go to friends houses if he isn't.

[HenriettaJones]

I think it's great that you have a 3 year old who eats nuts and soya products, and who is happy enough to eat pretend cheese products!!

One way of looking at it might be to not worry about finding substitute dairy products but just to look at what else you could eat instead. Avocados are a great source of good fats, and Lentil's a great source of protein (and I think count as 1 of the 5 a day too!) My grandma makes a great Dahl, I think it's basically just lentils, spices and coconut milk. Lovely!

My 4yo likes Ratatouille which is a totally vegan meal, aubergines, onions, courgettes and peppers in a tomato sauce with rice or pasta or even on a baked potato.

Then there's just easy stuff like fishfingers and baked beans. Beans on toast could be a good breakfast if you're fed up looking for a way to substitute milk. Again that's a protein and a vegetable!

If you make a vegetarian Paella or a stir fry you could use nuts for a bit of protein. Or you could try Quorn chicken style pieces which are a bit less chewy that meat. (DS loves meat but used to get fed up chewing and spit it out!)

But agree with the others, it sounds like you are having to restrict a lot so could be worth gradually encouraging more meat. Does he dislike all meat? DS started off with (please don't hate me!) chicken dippers and slices of pre-cooked meat. Then after a while I moved on to chicken breast. Now he eats most meats.

Good luck! I am vegetarian by the way, and tried going Vegan once and found it very tough. Personally I think eating meat and not dairy is probably what we were meant to do naturally so I reckon your son will grow up very strong and healthy.

[CantSleepWontSleep]

Henrietta - quorn contains egg so he wouldn't be able to have that.

[HenriettaJones]

Oh sorry, didn't know that. Goes to show how little I know what I eat!

[mawbroon]

Thanks for all your replies ladies.

The more I think about this, the more I think that he's actually doing ok, but cutting out the goats stuff just made me feel like bang, there goes another whole group of stuff he can eat.

I don't know if it is the lactose or the protein that is causing the problem. He still has some breastmilk, but obviously I have no idea how much. He feeds morning/night and sometimes in the day if he is upset/ill/hurt/whatever.

He will eat bread, pasta, rice, quinoa (but not much of it), potatoes sometimes, lots of different fruits, but veg is a sticking point. He will eat peas and sweetcorn and maybe a carrot if he's in the mood. he loves tomato puree, so much so that he will spread it on bread or stir it into pasta. Nuts and peanut butter I mentioned earlier. And of course he loves all the processed stuff - fish fingers, chicken dippers etc, but we try just to have them if there is nothing else (parties, eating out etc)

He is not big on veg at all and stuff like soup is a no go area which is a shame!

I have found that he can have stuff that has milk in the ingredients without upset. It's just the full on milk stuff that bothers him, you know like yogurt/cheese/custard etc. And a one off seems to be ok, it affects him after building up for a few days.

The allergy clinic referred us to a dietician in February, however around that time I tried him back on cows milk and he went a week with no ill effect so I cancelled the appointment then a few days later on i think day 10, i saw that his poos were liquid. We are back at the allergy clinic next month, so I will ask to be re-referred to the dietician, even just to put my mind at rest.

I look at ds and he is strong and healthy and growing like cabbage, so I guess he is doing ok.

[HenriettaJones]

DS wont try soup either! I think they don't believe it's food! I'm sure they'll come around one day!

Peas is a great veg to like, great source of iron. And maybe if he likes tom puree you could experiment with making tomato sauces, maybe sneak some other veg in!

There's a great pasta sauce called primavera which is peas, asparagus, broccoli (sp?) and a creamy tomato sauce. It does have cream in but if that's ok as an ingredient it is a lovely meal. DS doesn't like peas or asparagus but I do, so I make it and just put the bits he likes on his plate! I get the best bits!

Like you say, your DS is strong and healthy and growing (like a cabbage?!) so you're obviously doing a good job

[mawbroon]

Right. Today was a fairly typical day. I will list what he has eaten....

-Soya yogurt with cereal in it
-Cereal with rice milk in it
-Toast with jam (he would have have peanut butter but Granny was pushing the jam
-Roll with pate
-Oat milk to drink
-about half an apple and most of a satsuma
-more oat milk to drink
-rice mixed with peas with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese substitute
-a mini naan bread
-another soya yogurt and more oat milk.

So, today looks like too much bread. I am concious of trying not to overload him with the one thing but it's hard.

Sigh....

[HenriettaJones]

I think that's pretty impressive TBH, you've got cereal and rice in there as well so it's not like he's only had bread.

BTW, I was thinking if he gets runny poos, I've heard bananas are good for that?

And what is it with Grannies and Jam?!!!

[CantSleepWontSleep]

Will he eat meat if it's minced mawbroon? Dd isn't a big meat fan, but will eat bolognese type stuff now, or processed stuff like those minted lamb kebabs that most supermarkets have. Or sausages? Toad in the hole works well with oat milk (as do pancakes) if you can get egg replacer.
And if he'll eat bolognese then you can chop up carrots or celery very finely into it, or grate courgette or carrot in, to get some extra veg into him.
What about beans, does he like them?
I make a bean, bacon (big lumps from a joint) and barley casserole in the slow cooker (but you could do it in a normal oven just fine), which uses red kidney beans, butter beans, lentils and pearl barley. It's a meal in itself, but also works well with rice.
And if he is good with assorted beans then you could do a tomatoey bean pie topped with mashed potato.
You could also start trying to introduce other veg by mixing with mashed potato. We mix butternut squash with ours, which goes down well, or parsnip, which gets mixed results depending on whether it's a day when she likes parsnips or not .

Since he likes tomato puree and bread, could you try getting him to make pizza with you, and have a range of veg topping for him to choose from? He might be more inclined to try them if it's just a bit and he gets to put them on himself. I make it without cheese at all rather than have to eat cheezly.

What about fish - we haven't mentioned that yet have we? Does he like it? Dd (similar age as you know) isn't keen on the cod/haddock staples, but likes lemon sole (in breadcrumbs or the light coating stuff, but the latter usually contains milk) and will sometimes eat salmon, since we sold her on salmon fish fingers on account of them being pink inside .

Hope something there is useful.

[zanz1bar]

My Ds has a similar problem, and can handle some milky products, custard, ice cream etc occasionally but gets pale stools if he has had too much dairy.
I found that upping his iron intake made a big difference, not easy for a boy who hates the idea of 'flat' meat or green veg. I often top him up with minidex tonic if he has too much diary and that seems to improve things.
His problem was iron absorption because of the dairy intolerance.

[mawbroon]

OK, here is today's intake....

-Cereal and soya yogurt
-cereal and oat milk
-rice with peas and sweetcorn (not very much though)
-roll and peanut butter
-portion fruit salad with oat cream
-tuna/pasta/sweetcorn/mayola
-more fruit
-oat milk to drink (prob about three cups through the day)

Minced meat is hit or miss. He doesn't eat much if we have bolognaise. Kind of only whatever sticks to the pasta IYSWIM. He will eat mince and tatties though, but DH hates it, so we don't have it that often!! He will eat sausages but I have to watch the salt, most sausages have the best part of a gram of salt each!!

He will eat baked beans, and sometimes a few plain chick peas (not hummous though) but sneaking other veg into mashed tatties is a no go. He also has a texture thing going on with anything slimey, so he will look at me as if I have tried to poison him if there is anything like sweet potato or avocado on his plate.

We do make pizza. I make one for dh and me and DS makes his own. He scoffed a whole 6" pizza the other day which had cheezly on it, some salami and tomato puree.

Fish - he won't eat fish fish IYSWIM, but loves fish fingers. What a great idea about the salmon ones!! Pink is his fave colour, so I will try to convince him that they are so cool that he has to try them!

He helps me to cook a lot, and he actually tries a surprising amount of different foods when he's helping me cook. But then I put them on his plate and suddenly he doesn't like them any more.

Interesting re the iron thing zanz1bar. Since about Easter time, he has been really tired. Complaining about being tired at all different times of the day. I just put it down to him growing so fast (he has grown about 1.5 inches in the last 8 weeks) but perhaps the iron thing could be part of it. He is having breastmilk which should help, but I'm not sure there's much iron in anything else he's having. I will ask the nutrtionist if I get referred.

[mawbroon]

We have proper poo today.

I don't remember exactly how long ago I stopped the goats' stuff, but on stopping cows' stuff previously, it has taken 9 or 10 days to get back to normal.

So, I am now even more sure that it was deffo the goats' stuff causing the problem. [sigh]

[zanz1bar]

I now avoid givng any milky drinks to DS.
He has icecream and cheese in family meals but try and supplement calcium from other sources, mostly peanut butter.

I am not a big fan of oat milk or soya milk esp for boys. He has dry ceral which he prefers or poridge made with water, usually its boiled egg.
Water and fruit juice to drink. If he avoids milk altogether he is fine.
Hopefully he will grow out of it.

[Stigaloid]

My DS drinks rice milk - loves it. He also likes Manchego cheese, which is made from Sheep's milk. I don't like cheese and rarely it and don't suffer too badly - there are lots of meals you can cook without it. Fish pie with white sauce made with rice milk, spag bol, lancashire hot pot, fish in white sauce (again using rice milk), oat milk is good too. Chicken casserole, chicken rissotto. There is loads. You just adapt and you will also learn new receipes and make some up as you go along.

[mawbroon]

Stigaloid - yes, these recipe ideas are great, but I know for sure that ds wouldn't eat them!! He doesn't like anything sloppy, the fussy bugger!

[Stigaloid]

Hmmm - have you tried home made fish fingers? very easy to do and take as long to cook as frozen ones. Chicken rissotto isn't sloppy. what about stuffed jacket potato? Have you tried getting him to help you with cooking? sometimes fussy eaters eat better if they are involved in the preparation of food. My son won't eat anything too creamy either - can be most frustrating if you have slaved over family meal. He does love eating vegetables though and finger foods (he is 23months). I hope you find some answers. Def try the rice milk though as a good alternative and not nearly as strong in taste as Soya, which tends to make everything taste of soya i found.