Anyone fancy a weaning a CMPA / LA baby?

[drawohamme]

Between drowning in advice from the dietician and being dismissed by too many people telling me 'he'll just grow out of it', could do with knowing I'm not alone.

Thread! Can't believe I missed the word thread on the end

Ha ha thought you were looking to have your little one fostered for a while when I saw the title! I know what CMPA is but what's the LA bit? You're definitely not alone. My DS (now 6) is allergic to milk, wheat, eggs and nuts so I remember how hard the weaning stage was but it is doable I promise and you'll be surprised how many options there are available in the supermarkets - the hardest part is getting used to reading all the labels!

I thought the same - if anyone replied they could take mine on as well!

My son is 9m, and has allergies to dairy, egg, peanut and soya. You're lucky you've been drowning in advice from the dietician - ours was bloody useless. I just got a ton of cookery books out the library, some for weaning and some for allergy free cooking, and have copied out all the recipes that he can have so I've got a stash of them.

I suppose the worst bit is knowing that I have to actually think about what I'm going to feed him every day and plan accordingly - oh to be able to just whip up an omelette in 5 minutes!

It's pretty time-consuming at the moment - I'm not a brilliant cook although I do cook everything from scratch, so I'm still a total novice at adapting recipes so that they are suitable for my son as well as being edible for us! I'm getting there though - probably every 3 nights we'll all have the same meal, usually some sort of casserole/shepherds pie type thing.

We've been quite lucky with family because our nephew has the same allergies so it's not a 'novelty' - everyone has already seen how serious it can be so they accept that we are in the same boat.

How old is your baby?

I used this book, it is only available second hand and I would only pay a few quid for it at most but it has good information on sources of nutrition though some of the information is out of date (written before BLW) but has some good ideas in it and nine years on, I still use a couple of recipes in it and flick through it every now and again.

Just to give you hope my DS was severely CMPI, he was very sick when he was diagnosed (12 weeks old) and switched to Neocate formula milk.

Weaning wasn't really a problem, i knew he had a bit of oral aversion from early reflux (caused by the CMPI) and so I didn't push him, waited till 6 months and did BLW and just let him get on with it. He was slow to wean, still on 5 full bottles when he hit a year but happily developing at his own pace.

We intended to do a dairy challenge when he hit one but had to delay it because he suffered from a temporary problem with gluten intolerance for a couple of months (that sucked). We eventually started the dairy challenge when he was 14 months instead. We took it very very slowly, slower even than the dietician recommended largely because I was scared, I didn't really believe that he would be over it and didn't want a return to the terribly painful baby days. He seemed to suffer minorly at each stage, slight tummy grumbles or minorly unusual nappies. Nothing major and tbh nothing I could definately say was milk and not just teething! He is 16 months now and on two bottles a day (not related to the CMPI but just to show that despite the slow weaning he is progressing fine - now eats lots and huge variety). He has dairy-containing foods including yoghurt and cheese everyday and I don't monitor how much any more, his bottles are currently 50% Neocate 50% cows milk. I'm pretty sure he'd be ok on 100% cows milk now but he doesn't like the taste so we are working up slowly. I aim to be off the. Neocate in the next 2-3 weeks. He currently shows no signs of the CMPI.

That was longer than I'd planned but hopefully is a positive story for you. Happy to answer any questions if there is anything I can help with.

As a foot note DS also has an unrelated contact allergy to egg. He can have foods containing well cooked egg but no egg alone or less-well-cooked egg like fresh pasta. At 16 months this allergy is still present but isn't much of a problem...

So sorry I killed your thread thought it was helpful...

MistyB - that books looks worth a look. I can't believe how hard it's been to try and find a book about nutrition for babies and toddlers. As there are multiple foods we have to avoid, at the moment I've had two choices - spend hours trying to work out if my son is going to get all his key nutrients, or give him what I think is a balanced diet and hope it includes everything. The latter really isn't ideal - I know there are some days when there probably hasn't been a high enough fat content or protein in my son's food, because it's still not a natural thing for me to think about the implications of his limited diet if I don't substitute for the things he can't eat.

Nightfall - that's brilliant and it is always good to hear there are positive outcomes. Were you bf'ing when your son was diagnosed or was he already on formula? The problem we have is that our diagnosis of CMPA is based on all our anecdotal evidence as he was diagnosed at 8 weeks and being ebf'd (same with soya, as both skin prick tests didn't react, although peanut and egg did react so we know those are definite). Although his symptoms did clear somewhat when I went dairy/soya/egg free, sometimes I find myself thinking "what if he doesn't have the allergy and it was all just down to him being a tiny baby so maybe he just got better because he matured".

Hello! Sorry I thought this was dead and there was another dairy free weaning thread.

No we are lactose intolerant here so slightly different.

Saw the dietician who just talked to me as though he was CMPI and started talking about a dairy reintroduction plan. I might be being a bit PFB but wasn't convinced that feeding him biscuits, ice cream and chocolate buttons was a smart idea - allergic or not :(

So now I'm looking to try and find out how to attempt to reintroduce lactose foods instead, using foods appropriate for a baby

Hello! My little boy is 10 months and dairy/soya/nut free and also can't have tomatoes/carrots/apple/pear. I am a terrible cook so it has been hard work.
Would anyone be interested in sharing a typical days food? I am a bit stuck in a rut I think.

I know what you mean about being stuck in a rut - I find that unless I do a meal plan for the week I tend to keep sticking to the same things. We're avoiding tomato as well as that seems to make his eczema worse, so it makes it even more of a challenge to come up with sauces.
Yesterday's food was:
Breakfast - weetabix, neocate, blueberries, half a banana (then he nicked the other half from a table I thought he couldn't reach!).
Lunch - salmon in a pea, leek and mushroom sauce, pasta
Dinner - chickpeas, cannellini beans, pepper and courgette sauce, quinoa

I try to only give meat or fish once a day so the other meal is usually some type of bean/pulse/lentil type thing. I really need to get around to making some bread so one of the meals can be a bit more snacky, but it's so hard to find time when you're making meals from scratch all the time isn't it?

What kind of things do you cook?

I cook all sorts and I stick loads in the freezer and just take out when needed. From sausages to mini pizza to mash. There are some good df,sf, ef, nf ideas here sarahnsprogs.wordpress.com/

Greta-just noticed your ds has a soy intolerance-have you noticed any problems with chickpeas/lentils etc? I read somewhere that the protein in them is similar to soy. Do you avoid bread that has soya flour listed as an ingredient?

Just wondering as ds is cmpi and I've trialled him with some soya and he seems to be crankier and a rash on his face has increased. ..he could be teething though either, hard to know. I'm going to stop the soya for a week or two to see if there is any difference, but im not sure if I should stop feeding him lentils (he seems to love them).

He's been fine on all pulses/beans - it's so hard to tell though as his eczema fluctuates so wildly all the time.

Bread is so difficult - I avoid soya flour, so all the "free from" breads are useless - I just use ciabatta and cut it into slices, but it's not brilliant as the filling falls through all the holes! M&S mini pittas are ok as well, but other than that I haven't found any normal sized bread he can have.

Greta,

So you are looking for bread that is dairy, egg, soya and nut free? Is that correct?

If so, you can have American bagels, you can also have waitrose farmhouse bread (which is just like a normal bread).

If you are wheat free as well than there is Energ-8 bread from sainsburys that you can have (I don't like the taste of it). There is also a lovely wheat free home made bread that my local posh bakery make, that is delicious.

Greta, also I have a lovely rolls recipe that is yummy, if you have a bread machine it makes it a lot easier.

Thanks shinesmile - I'll check the bagels and Waitrose bread.

I've got a breadmaker as well, just haven't got around to making loaves in it, but if you've got a roll recipe then I'd love to have it and I will somehow find the time to use it at the weekend!

Here you go

www.themoderndaymom.com/2010/04/yummy-dinner-roll-recipe-bread-machine.html