Fortifying foods after toddler’s growth has faltered CMPA

[bea19]

Our DS has multiple food allergies including dairy, egg and soya. We’ve been under the community dietitian while waiting for an allergy consultant appointment but all visits have been online and he hasn’t been weighed. I weighed him after the last appointment this week aged 23 months and he was only 750g more than he was when the HV weighed him at 11 months. So he has put on less than a kilogram in a year! Obviously we are very concerned. Dietitian has recommended trying to ‘fortify’ his safe foods with stuff like Oatly cream and oil. Has anyone else done this and did it work for you? How quickly did your little one manage to gain weight after you started this? Did they get back to the centile they’d been tracking before? Thanks in advance for sharing any experiences.

[Superscientist]

Looking at beefing up calories per mouthful is probably your best bet. Adding peanut butter to slices of apple that sort of thing.

My daughter goes through phases of stagnant weight changes and is a poor eater so we have to try to keep the calories up for the small amounts she eats. If she is in a non eating mood she lives off plain pasta so we try to put lots of olive oil on it.

Its hard when weights are far apart as you don't know if it has been a slow steady weight gain or if they have gained more and then lost weight. It being picked up is important and now you know there can be more regular weigh ins.

My daughters weight has generally been good but between 1 and 2 she dropped over 2 percentiles in height/length from the 25th to the 1st she has now stabilised at this level but means that her diet is still stressful even though her weight is good on the 25th percentile

It's hard with multiple allergies and my daughters allergies mean that a lot of products are not available to her. Coconut is a particularly difficult one as it's in a lot of the dairy substitutes.

I would keep a food diary ahead of your next dietician appointment and ask for specific ways of adding to the foods already eaten. You could do it yourself too, keep a dairy for 2 or 3 days and before you next go shopping write what you could add to each of those meals to increase the calories.

Do you have any peer support? I'm in a group (south Manchester) of mums with allergies and they are very helpful for this sort of queries

[bea19]

Thank you so much for your reply @Superscientist . I think you’re right about trying to increase the calories in each mouthful. Concentrating on every mouthful feels quite stressful at the moment. I guess maybe it gets easier when you’re used to the types of additions you can make for each meal. Will definitely try to find some other allergy parents nearby. None of our friends children have food allergies and while most of our family are supportive we do have a few who don’t get it, suggesting parents should expose their kids to the things they are allergic to to sensitise them, and not checking labels when they invite the kids over for cake etc… if you don’t mind me asking, how did you find your allergy group?

[Superscientist]

Oh don't focus on every mouthful! You can build up to that. Focus on adding something to one meal at a time!
If doing veggies try roast veggies or making mash/purée sauces with a good dollop of df butter cream.
Do a few days of a higher calorie snack and a higher calorie dinner. Then see if you can do add calories to a second meal/snack and over a couple of weeks you can see what works and what doesn't.

I had severe pnd and my HV put me in touch with a peer support MH group. It was when I was learning about my daughters allergies and another mum was in a similar situation and knew about the group so put me in touch with them.

Our group has a FB page that isn't really used but does have contact information and I believe they are in Instagram but I don't have it. I access the group via their WhatsApp group and face to face playgroups. I would probably start with social media and maybe see if your HV has any information on local groups.

It is hard, my daughter has got to the age of kids parties. Every one is at least 2 phone calls or messages to find out about food and some form of packed lunch as well as preemptive treats as every one forgets to mention the sweetie cone at the end of the party or the pinata with chocolate inside. So I have to make sure I have things to give my daughter before she realises she's missing out.

[bea19]

Oh gosh, parties are hard to navigate with allergies aren’t they. Our little girl got a snickers in a pass the parcel when she was younger and she’s allergic to peanut. Luckily she didn’t scoff it on the spot and we were able to intercept it but we’re ok high alert at parties now!