Eating Allergen Free

It's been a major adjustment learning how to eat allergen free, but I think I'm finally getting the hang of it. Initially, I thought she just had a dairy allergy, but I think many of the common allergens bother her as she still had blood in her stool, so I've eliminated gluten, dairy, soy, tree nuts, fish and corn. At first, I thought that meant eating meat, fruits and veggies which is great, but can be a bit boring as well as time consuming. And it's really hard to cook 3 meals a day plus snacks with a 10 week old. After trying a few things and exploring different brands and blogs, I've found some really good food that's not making this diet seem so bad.

For Breakfast:

If you're from the south, and you like grits, this is a good alternative. It's brown rice cereal and quinoa flakes. I put in a little butter substitute, and it's delish. 

Speaking of butter substitute, I use Earth Balance - 

It's pretty good. Pre-Ellie, I would've never used anything like this simply because I felt like I don't want to use artificial things like fake butter and fake meat, but when you're so severely limited in your diet, you'll concede to a few things. 

Something I've tried recently, but am not sure how it will affect her, is sausage. We typically love Jimmy Dean sausage but it has so many ingredients that are not pronounceable, that I decided to try Bob Evans. (My husband took a trip to Bi Lo vs Whole Foods). 

When eating Gluten Free, you have to be careful with non organic meats because even though the meat itself may not have gluten, the feed corporate farms use has wheat, and it can be passed through. Ideally, any meat one eats would be from a grass fed animal. The other thing you have to look for is, does the meat have casein in it? Many times, they use fillers and casein will be in meat, especially deli meat. 

When an infant has a reaction to dairy in it's diet, it's not the lactose, but the milk protein which is casein. So you have to look closely at ALL ingredients because many things have casein. For example, at Trader Joe's, there some chips I wanted but they contained casein. Chips. Like, chips. And from Trader Joe's, which is why I don't like that store. Whole Foods is expensive as is Earth Fare, but they take the time to monitor what ingredients are in the food and are very specific in making sure the ingredients are whole or the package is properly labeled. The Fresh Market and Trader Joe's are just hipster expensive groceries that have cool packaging vs actually being organic or of high quality. 

This is delicious! And it's so nice to finally have some ice cream because I have been wanting some so badly! 

These are actually pretty good too. Would I buy them if I could eat dairy, no. But as a sub, they're really good. 

One thing that I haven't found that's free of all allergens, and that's bread. There is no bread or bread dessert that doesn't at least have soy, corn, or almond meal in it. Other than that, it hasn't been too bad. And as a side note, I've lost all of my baby weight. I'm fitting into my pre pregnancy clothes at 11 weeks out. What a nice side effect :)

I'll start putting up recipes of things that I like because it's REALLY REALLY hard to find recipes that are completely allergen free and if anyone else is having these issues, I'd hope that I can help. 

Dealing with an allergy

As I mentioned in my last post, Ellie has a dairy allergy. I think it was about 3 weeks when she was almost inconsolable at night and I knew something was wrong. I took her diaper to the doctor and they tested it to see if there is blood in the stool. There was, which Dr Matthias said meant she had a dairy allergy.

She told me eliminate all dairy, soy and wheat from my diet. I also decided to eliminate eggs and tree nuts as well, because some of her symptoms seemed to have persisted over the past couple of weeks. Eliminating the food from my diet in addition to the Zantac has helped a lost but it can be hard because one doesn't realize how much food actually has dairy in it. These are the foods I've had to eliminate:

*Milk - duh

*butter, yogurt, buttermilk, half and half AND non dairy creamer (it still has dairy remnants)

*bread (it has both wheat and dairy), and all bread products so croutons, cookies, pita, etc. 

I started looking at vegetarian stuff because I thought, hey they probably won't use as many dairy products but most of them contain soy and 60% of babies with a dairy allergy also have a soy allergy. So no soy milk, nothing made with soybean oil (ahem, mayonnaise, pam), edamame, tofu and almost every non dairy vegetarian dish. 

Then I was thinking, hey what about paleo - nope because paleo peeps like to substitute with Almond meal a bunch. I'm eliminating tree nuts which is self explanatory but not recipes with almond meal. no almost milk, etc. 

Lastly, I got rid of eggs too. So, what in the heck am I eating? I've actually found a lot of really good things:

Oatmeal! and although I don't like it, I found the dairy free, soy free chocolate chips that are really good and I add strawberries. So the oatmeal is just a filler so I won't be hungry in like, an hour. For lunch, I typically have a meat or quinoa burger (frozen because I can't cook a ton when you have a baby crying that she's hungry or tired or wants to be held), and some fruit, lots of apples, pineapple, and watermelon. 

I also recently tried this recipe I found on pinterest:

Paleo Chicken Casserole

It was kind of funky, but kind of good. Am I going to rush to make it again, no - does it give me an option of something to make other than plain ole' meat and fruit - yes. 

I've also found Rice Cereal is really good, especially when I add bananas and Rice milk. 

All in all, it hasn't been too bad adjusting, I just have to look at ingredients a lot. In the past, when presented with a very stringent diet, I have balked because I don't like or agree with them, but when I get tempted to eat a crouton with my salad or a Krispy Kreme donut, I remember that this is going to make my baby sick and it helps me control myself. 

I go back to the idea that breastfeeding, while very beneficial for your baby and very rewarding, is hard. I just thought you popped a boob out and bam, baby eats and you're on your way. She has to learn how to latch, then hopefully your supply is right - not too much or too little because both cause issues, she's not allergic to anything in your diet, etc etc etc. It's hard. But it does keep getting easier and I am grateful that I have the opportunity to do it because I feel very connected to my baby in a way that is important to me. 

I'll probably be putting some recipes on here because it really is hard to find this stuff, so maybe it'll help :)