Food is a scary thought!

I can't help but be incredibly scared when we try new foods, lucky most of the time food that don't agree with Jydan just cause a rash, but still, you don't want you little bub filled with an itchy rash.
I wasn't one of those mums that were orginally scared of feeding their baby, and I wasn't one of those mums that camped outside a hospital when they introduced new foods to their child encase of a reaction.. I really had no worries about food... until I realised how food effects my little boy!

My son has quite a few food intolerance and allergies which is something I didn't really think about when having a child. I know lactose intolerance may be a possibly but not his handful of other ones. Lactose intolerance runs in my family, so we figured it may get passed down from me.

At six weeks old, when we went for Jydan's six week check at the doctors, the doctors thought he was lactose intolerant, by his symptoms, his poos ect. She couldn't actually say yes or no without us getting him tested but it definitely seemed that way. Cutting out dairy from my own diet (I was breastfeeding and still am) confirmed that he was lactose intolerant. There's still a huge variety of foods he can have and alot of cheese's don't contain lactose. We have just started supplementing some breastfeeds with soy formula and will move on to goats milk when the time comes.
He seems fine on the soy formula, which is heaps different when I tried him on formula, that wasn't dairy free, when he was a few weeks old. He ended up vomiting non stop for hours with about 5 runny poops. All I wanted was him to sleep for a little bit - that was a complete fail!! Poor thing, I know now I was poisoning his little system.
I won't introduce lactose to him for a while yet, I can tell from when I do eat dairy and his stomach gurgling, that it does still react with him.

I also have horribly sensitive skin and eczema so we made allowances if our son was to have sensitive skin too and started with sensitive products and used essential oils instead of wash's ect. However, his skin is worse then we ever imagined! Plants, grass, soap, wipes, oils, shampoo's, creams, sticky tape, wool.. Eggs, wheat, grains, dairy, berries.. it's really insane.
I've wrote about baby eczema a few months ago that you can read here. what were using to help prevent and get rid of the eczema on extremely sensitive skin.
With alot of creams and washes and wheat, grains and berries they can really play up Jydan's eczema. That's why we avoid them. We were told to avoid quite a list full of foods but decided to try them out anyway.  Gluten and berries do in fact make him break out. Wheat rusks tend to be the worst. Rice is fine. Although, now my son is 13 months we are able to give him some wheat without a reaction, more then a slice of bread a day or so does still cause an eczema reaction. This tells us that he should grow out of it by two - yeey!! Berries we have not tried to reintroduce yet.

Jydan's eczema also started before he was even having solids so we knew that it was environmental as well. The washes we were using, although sensitive, still contained ingredient that his skin didn't like. and the avocado, apricot, coconut and jajoba oil we were using on his skin and hair contained plants and such that his skin also didn't like.
It took AGES to find a moisturiser and wash that works for him.

His first egg reaction - note the red swollen face.

My son also has low iron and vitamin D so at about 8 months we thought it was a fantastic to help boost some iron with egg! Well that was a miserable scary fail and he's allergic to egg! (face swelling and red!).. We've tried it a couple of times since accidentally and yep, definitely allergic! I had a croissant the other day and didn't even think it may contain egg.. until about ten minutes later his face went red and swelled! So definitely no egg to up his iron! I think egg is the worst of his allergies, and each reaction seemed to have got worse. We supplement egg by using rice flour and golden syrup, or olive oil. Which made such a delicious birthday cake!!

WATERMELON!

After battling with foods we also battle with eating in general. It seems to Jydan that food is a scary thought for him too! Jydan doesn't like food. It's not really his thing apparently! We are lucky if he eats two meals a day, and thats breakfast and dinner. If he doesn't want to eat he will more or less just play with the food. He is really fussy about foods and will only eat foods he can feed himself aswell.He also hates the spoon, which we've found out is because of an association to reflux. If he was given grapes, watermelon and bananas all day though he would eat!! But considering he has lost weight about 4 months in a row, about 100 grams (about 0.22 pounds) a month, he needs to have something a bit more fatty then watered fruits!
We now go to see a speech pathologist to help with his eating. We've seen them once and they were really really helpful! I was blown away, and are going back probably monthly to keep an eye on his eating progress. They just gave us a few tips on how to encourage him eating, and to not stress about food because then it makes food stressful. We want food to be fun and enjoyable so he will eat. He just doesn't seem to have an appetite at all!
We also see a dietitian that we talk to about the weight side of things, how to increase fat contents and that sort of thing. So hopefully with the help of encouraging him to eat and increasing fats we will have a baby that will start to put on weight!!

It seems like it's all a never ending cycle!! Here's to the end of allergies and the start of eating! I think with our next child I will be much more cautious about food, knowing that it runs in our little family now. I'll definitely be a bit more wearier about introducing foods, thats for sure!