DS (8months) multiple allergies/elimination diet/eczema - stressed. Help!

[shirleycat1]

Ds (8 months) had a severe reaction to egg a couple of months ago. We had to call and ambulance for him and after he was sorted we got a referral to the paediatric allergy clinic. We were on the waiting list but with a lot of blagging from me we were seen last week.

Since I have been weaning him his eczema has been terrible, pretty bad or bad. He scratches himself to pieces.He has also been sick or had diarrhoea quite a bit.

So the allergy consultant said we need to get his skin under control before we do any tests and has referred to a dietician and dermatologist. He said they would be urgent referrals but when I spoke to his secretary yesterday she hadn't got round to typing the letters yet (frustrated!). He said I need to cut out dairy, eggs (obviously), nuts, fish, soya and possibly wheat. He said the dietician will help me and also prescribe milk, and the dermatologist should give some hard core cream to get skin under control.

I am so stressed. The consultant was great and I felt he knew what he was doing and we have a good plan, but I need to get on with it - not wait for letters to be typed.

DS's eating is fairly crap. He likes cheese on toast, rice pudding and yoghurt, non of which I will be able to give. He's crap at being spoon fed and not too keen on feeding himself.

This is DC3 and the other two were so easy. BLWed with no issues. I feel lost in it all. I have no idea what I am going to feed him and I am stressed. Has anyone been in a similar situation and can offer some wise words.

Thanks in advance...

(About to do school run so won#t reply till later if anyone replies to this)

have been in similar situation.
am very glad that you contacted the secretary to highlight this gap in care for your child.
Nothing wrong in a follow up call to make sure that things have progressed as well.
in the meantime:
Did you have the name of the milk? can your gp prescribe it for you?

skin wise this help needs to happen due to risk of infection, again wonder if GP could contact your consultant or dermatologist and speed things up for you?
Sometimes a GP call can work wonders!

contact the eczema society for further help or allergyUK helpline.

wheat free pasta, bread is in the shops, and just try and take it one meal at a time.
I am very aware that this is a stressful and frustrating time. The stress from lack of sleep dealing with eczema and seeing a severe allergic reaction is enough with the food issues on top.

When our son first showed signs of food allergy after his first reaction to egg at 12 months, we had to wait 8 months for first appointment with allergy clinic some years ago. He was also given a long list of allergies to avoid. We counted ourselves lucky to be seen that soon as the waiting list was over a year back then.

BTW what is your eczema routine? do you feel you have been supported well in this area with your GP?

Had some similar, though lesser, problems with first-born which turned out to be -lactose intolerance. We struggled in the UK but when abroad my in-laws insisted we see their paediatrician, who diagnosed. Fortunately the UK doctors followed their lead, although we never got to the bottom of some reactions.

She used to be covered head to toe, eyelids too, in eczema that was bleeding, had diarrhoea all the time and was losing weight - none of this considered to be a problem by our old GP. She also had permanent bleeding nappy rash which had her in constant pain and we didn't realise it wasn't normal nappy rash until we had our second child Within a week of changing her diet it cleared up, and now she has just a tiny little bit of eczema/diarrhoea if she has something with milk in.

Rice pudding - you can make a version with coconut milk! Hope it goes down well.

If it turns out lactose is the problem rather than milk allergy then there's fortunately a growing range of Lactofree products including yoghurt, cheddar, cream cheese etc. If there's a milk and soy allergy you're a bit stuffed unfortunately, though I do wonder if you could try making your own yoghurt using one of those Lakeland kits, but with rice milk or something. Not sure if it would work.

Try lots of different creams for the eczema - sometimes they react to what's in one product but a different brand works. We find Oilatum works, and when things are bad there's another lard like cream (epiderm?). Unfortunately they all muck up the plumbing.

Is your water hard or soft? Opinion is divided as to whether kids with eczema should have frequent or rare baths. We think we've worked out why - we live in a very hard water area and frequent baths here seem to dry out the skin, so we bathe the children about every 3 days except when they're hot and sticky in the summer. When we visit my parents in a very soft water area their skin clears up like magic, and we bathe them more frequently. Looked at fitting a water softener but it was practical impossible due to the house design.

We're now going back down the diagnosis route with our second child, who has twice had extreme allergic reactions to god knows what...

We have had similarish situation, really feels like being in the deep end to start with!

Right, dairy substitutes:

Butter substitute- Pure sunflower or olive oil spread
Cream substitute: oatly cream, get it in holland and Barrett or waitrose.
Milk substitute: (for cooking, not drinking - sounds like you will need prescription for nutramigen or neocate formula unless you are breast feeding) oatly or coconut milk - go for fresh ones with added calcium if you can find them.
Yoghurt substitute: xotic coconut yoghurts, can get them in Wholefoods

Meals:

Rice, cooked in stock (check labels for dairy or soya) or coconut milk or oatly cream
Homemade rice pudding, made with pudding rice and oatly cream, (and sugar if you fancy!)
Heinz baby meals - there are about 3 varieties without allergens (Sunday chicken dinner, beef with sweet potato, pork and apple - but check these just to make sure!)
Porridge made with coconut or oat milk
Pancakes made from gram flour and sparkling water, fried in olive oil
Pure meat sausages from butcher
Potatoes or gluten-free pasta in a white sauce made from gf flour, Pure spread and oatly cream
Baked beans are dairy and soya free, not sure if gluten free too?
(Obviously root veg and meat such as poached or roasted chicken etc are allergen-free and good baby foods too.)

Hope that's a few ideas to be getting on with until you see a dietitian anyway! Good luck x

Thanks a lot for all your replies. I forgot to mention we are also vegi so meat is out. Although I may have to look at that as I'm not sure where protein will come from.

Got the school run to do. Will wrote more in a bit.

Thanks again...

If you make gluten-free cakes etc then don't just replace flour with gluten-free flour as it's be a disaster - apparently you need to add something else, don't know what. I've just thrown away gluten-free flour after baking disasters for a GF friend.

I have a feeling you can make cakes replacing egg with orange juice or something - check out vegan recipes, but whether they'd also work with gluten free flour I'm not sure.

Sorry, that's not helpful is it.

I wouldn't worry about protein for now - if yr baby is on formula he will get all his nutrition and most of his calories from that, food is just for chewing and digestion practice at this stage as far as I'm aware. Don't they say "until they're one it is just for fun"?!

OK, I finally have a second to reply. Thanks a lot to everyone. I feel slightly less stressed I think.

I spoke to my GP today to ask about her prescribing milk. She said she would but needed to know which one so she was going to contact the allergy consultant. I also spoke to his secretary and she said she had typed the dietician referral letter and was going to send it today, so a dietician should be in touch soon. She said the dietician referral was marked as urgent, but the dermatology one not so I don't know how long I'll have to wait for that.

Re eczema regime - I use epiderm at least three times a day and steroid cream when it is more angry and inflamed. I was having to use the sterioid cream loads, but recently not so much. I feel that his skin looks much better than it has done, but the allergy consultant thought it looked really bad. We've tried loads of different creams but the epiderm seems to be best for him. Oh and we use dermol 300 in the bath. he does bath quite often, as part of the bedtime routine and to have a splash with DS1 and DD.

Thanks for food ideas. So is he likely to be able to eat coconut? I wasn't sure if it was a nut or fruit. He's pretty slow on the uptake of food which I am generally quite relaxed about, and I know "it's for fun until they're 1", but they don't just over night start to eat really well on their first birthday and I've never really known when you should start to worry and encourage a bit more solids. I remember thinking the same with the other DCs.

if you have any more meal or snack ideas I'd love to hear them.

Thanks again...

It is really hard to keep their skin moist in the bath so I'd really recommend cutting back on the baths. Our two have a bath once a week and we smother them in diprobase (or zero base or double base - basically any emollient) and then smear them in hydromol as soon as they get out. If they have particularly bad eczema flare ups we have something our doc called "special ointment number one" which is made of:
1% icthammol
15 % zinc oxide
84% soft yellow paraffin.
This is like magic ointment and calms their skin overnight. It is the same ointment a friend of mine was prescribed by a dermatologist for her daughter who had very bad eczema and it worked for her too. Maybe ask your gp if they can prescribe something similar? We got it because our chemist knew the ingredients, phoned the doc and asked her to prescribe them, and then mixed it up for us.

As for coconuts, I don't know if they are nuts or fruits or what! Sorry.

Other snack ideas: fruit pots or sachets; veggie sticks... and that is it!! I can't remember what else we gave our kids before the age of one. Not much, as far as I recall! Sorry not much use...

Shirley, so sorry you're going through this.

Some great suggestions above. Would just like to add that I used to be veggie until I had ds1, who was allergic to pretty much every form of protein except meat (milk, eggs, soya, nuts, peanuts, lentils, chick peas, all other pulses and beans, okay with fish and wheat though)

I have started eating meat with ds (I had to, as I was breastfeeding him for years, and we both needed protein). It still sometimes makes me feel sick to cook and eat meat, but I did what I had to do to keep my little boy healthy.

I do hope your ds`s eczema improves soon - eczema is so miserable, isn't it? I found that heavy use of the steroid creams was by far the best thing (I followed advice on this board!) because it cleared up existing outbreaks fairly quickly and allowed me to figure out what was causing any subsequent outbreaks.

Sorry, just 're read and realised that your baby is only eight months old. Don't worry about protein too much at the moment.. as auntie rosemary says, your ds will be getting all the protein and other nutrients he needs from breast milk at the moment. If your baby is currently eating cheese on toast etc with no major reaction, then maybe you will be able to carry on with being vegetarian (hopefully?)

Just be careful that avoiding wheat is different to avoiding gluten!

lots of different vegetable combinations should work plus rice, porridge and potato dishes, and then try to introduce some of the coconut alternatives, it is a fruit though it is possible to be allergic to it I dont think it is a common allergen and it does say suitable from 6 months on the koko and alpro coconut based milk alternatives and coyo yogurt is lovely. loads of threads already list good alternative baking options for later on.

I make lovely rice pudding with whole rice, rice milk or oat milk or almond milk depending on how extravagant you're feeling! (there's much more protein in it than the white, the secret is to cook it a long time and to soak it first).

There's protein in greens and salads which are lovely for BLW.

Thanks a lot. Is there a good rice pudding recipe anywhere?

I have a dietician appointment next Tuesday so will get the milk on prescription then and we can fully engage in the process. I feel quite daunted by it and am worried he won't drink the milk and won't eat any food and will waste away.

I just tried giving him a coconut milk yoghurt and he wasn't very impressed at all and basically refused it. He'll have to get used to it. He likes lots of fruit, a few vegis, olives and chips so that's a good start.

I did BLW with the other two basically because I am lazy, but it looks like I'm going to have to put a fair bit of effort in it this time.

The prescribed milk does taste pretty vile, well neocate does anyway. We got our daughter to drink it by gradually adding it to expressed milk, starting with one ounce and increasing by an ounce every few days, took about 3 weeks but worth it in the end because she gradually got used to the taste.

You could maybe try the same with the yoghurts? I suppose it depends on how much he is reacting to dairy and how fast you need to cut it out.

It does take a bit of time to get your head around it all but it'll become second nature after a while. I found it easier to change the whole family's meals, then it was easy enough to do a version of blw (ie, letting e baby eat off my plate!). Either that or just go for jars - there are plenty that are pretty much just vegetables!

As for rice pudding, I think you just stick the rice in a bowl, mix it with milk or cream and sugar and bake on a low heat for ages. I think...?

Yes Auntierose* But if you soak the whole rice for a while beforehand it helps it cook quicker and be softer (our GD says she likes white rice but has eaten whole organic rice and not said a word because it looks white!!).

I cook it in a saucepan on the hob; My Rice Pudding -;

After soaking you fill the saucepan with enough water that comes an inch above the rice. Bring it to the boil simmer for 5 mins. then turn down the heat to the coolest your cooker does and put a tight top on it. (I use a diffuser). Don't remove the top for approx 15 to 20 mins. Till it has tiny air holes in it. Then turn it off and leave for a while. (you can make more than you need for the rice pudding and take it out to freeze or whatever) Add the milk and sugar to the rest and cook slowly again until it's nice and rich. Grate in nutmeg or add cinnamon or what you like. This can be done slowly in the oven if you like. But stir it from time time. maybe add more milk if it needs it.

Thanks for rice pud recipe. Can you freeze it once the milk and sugar has been added and it's cooked?

You're welcome Yes I would think so as long as it's defrosted gradually and you give it a good stir I haven't done though.

I know cooked rice freezes beautifully on it 's own.