all you mums of allergic babies/children

[jenk1]

please help....

im absolutely stuck for meal ideas, dd has just spent the last week in hospital and she has hardly eaten anything so im desperate to get her eating again.
The consultant at the hospital said ive got to get her eating normally or she,ll end up back in hospital on a drip and thats the last thing i want
Her allergies are dairy,egg,wheat,citrus fruit and tomatos, ive exhausted every recipe that i know and she wont touch it, can anyone help with some new ideas.

Thanks in advance from a very worried and desperate mum

You should push for the testing as she may have grown out of the milk allergy. My son did. He is still allergic to a host of things but luckily not cows milk.

You should ask for a referral to a specialist consultant in allergies. Our consultant said that allergic children are often food phobic cos it can make them so ill. There is help out there for you but you will have to make a lot of noise to get it.

Is there anything she will eat?

yes, the ice-cream is very easy to find- I could get it in Somerset after all!

I have had similar problems with all of mine, but DS3 was the slowest to gain weight and the only one to see Paeds. The best advice we were given by our very good dietician was to add olive oil to anything he would eat, that worked a treat as far as weight gain went- he's small, but on the 25th centile now which was like when it happened!

Tuna is a big fave in our house, often with rice and veg (and oil [wink[), mild curries (coconut is full of calories, the creamed stuff is great for this too), we have at least one bung-it-in-a-casserole-and-roast-it pot roast each week, often flavoured (like today) with mint.

Could you get a recipe for potato cakes? Make with wheat free flour, they make excellent alternatives to burger baps and toast.

I'm fortunate that my boys (well wo of them) can only not have dairy, however I can't have kiwi, dairy, bread either and ds1 restricts himseld due to ASD.

What free potato cakes spread with sweet pepper puree, oregano, dairy free cheese, ham and pineapple? A DD Pizza!

dairy free cheese?- ive not heard of that before where can i get that?

Eaney all she will eat at the moment is mashed potato so i am putting nutramigen in it and she is having a lot of B/feeds as well.

jenk1 - I got a dairy free cheese from a medium size Tesco. In with normal cheese IIRC. They sell it on the www.goodnessdirect.co.uk website too, but by the time you've paid out for postage plus extra postage for fresh food, then extra for cold items.... it will have gone up 10 times in price! It was fairly gross IMO, but ds used to like goats cheese (before he became intolerant of it), so he associated the grated stuff with that, and decided it tasted nice!

By the way, how did you get nutramigen? My GP won't prescribe it as ds still has two bf's a day, and says that it should be prescribed by the dietician. He has rice milk, but I'd like to stop bfing soon (18m+ now), and don't think rice milk is enough.

i got it as my dietician told my gp to prescribe it.
Originally my gp prescribed soya milk,Dietician was annoyed when i told her this as she said that babies allergic to dairy are more than not allergic to soya and the gp knows this but is being tight with the prescriptions.

my dd got nutramigen because although im breastfeeding her still(18months old!) she wasnt putting on a lot of weight so i cook with nutramigen to make her meals.

HTH

If your baby is food phobic I imagine a behaviourial specialist could help. Will she eat sweets of any kind or custard (the Bird's variety). I think you need to get as much fat and maybe sugar into her. Olive oil a good one.

What about really sweet flapjacks or porridge? I imagine you have more chance with something really sweet. Is it possible to bake cakes from a grain other than wheat, maybe rye or rice flour?

made myself cake this weekend from rice flour Its not cake as I used to know it but it was OK. Xanathum gum is a gluten replacer that allows you to cook non wheat flours and have a better texture. I can get rice flour and gum in Tescos (but even though ours is quite big not the soya ice-cream )

If she'll eat mashed potato have you tried other purees? Mine were never food phobic but they were slow to take to "lumpy" food and I wonder if that was because they associated lumps with throat swelling.

im going to give her tuna and mashed potato fishcakes with nutramigen for lunch--umm yummy
i will see how she likes it.

i was looking through the archives and noticed that there isnt a thread for mums of allergic children and babies favourite recipes, perhaps we should start one to help each other out?

im going to start one in a minute, hope everyone will put their recipes on we should be able to get a good selection and it will be good for mums whose kids have only just been diagnosed with allergies because that time is frightening-well it was for me!

Can she have yeast? There is a very good nutritional yeast made by the same company as makes Marigold stock. I'm not at home ATM so can't check my cupboard, but I think it's called Enegevita. You can sprinkle it on lots of different foods to get a lovely savoury flavour, almost cheese-like, plus of course it's loaded with B vitamins. I get it from the health food shop.

Something that's always helped when my ds has gone off food, is to let him 'prepare' the food - even something simple like putting the last garnishes on the table and allowing him to garnish everyone's plate.

I get the dairy free cheese, ice cream etc from Holland and Barratett, the ice cream from Asda. The ice cream is great- dh prefers it to normal stuff.

I can't stand the cheese to be honest, but DS's never known any different and seem to like it (I got my allergy when expecting ds1 and it stayed with me). i think it's easier if you're born with it, tastewise: I can't abide wheat free pasta etc.

PeachyClairPumpkinPie - I don't like the taste most of the gluten free foods either. Luckily though, I can eat the alternatives. DS seems to love them all, but like you say, has never had the alternative to compare.

How do you find the corn pasta in comparison to the ones marketed as gluten free. DS doesn't like the corn one, which I find OK, but loves the Tesco spiral one - goodness knows what that is made from!

It's the texture of the corn pasta- yuck! But I am sensitive to food texture. it seems to have this soury after taste as well, but no-one else can taste it so it might be psychological

ugh no- i cant stand corn pasta either, its disgusting

• not just me then!