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Reintroducing dairy/soy? How?
M was diagnosed with a dairy and soy allergy when he was 3 months old. His pedi said some babies outgrow the allergies by 6 months, and I could try reintroducing those products back into my diet as a test to see if he still has a problem. I'm not really sure how I should do that though. His tell-tale allergy sign was blood in his stool, but now he's eating solids, so his stools are much different than they used to be. Would I still be able to notice a tiny speck of blood? I ate a small piece of cheese on Saturday, and he seemed fussier than usual on Saturday night, but I don't know if that's related to the cheese or a coincidence. I didn't notice any blood in his diaper. Sigh. This is going to be harder than I thought. I could go gung-ho and eat a huge plate of mac and cheese or something (oh God that would be divine), but I don't want to eat so much that I screw him up for a week if he's still allergic. How did others test these allergies?
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Re: Reintroducing dairy/soy? How?
Here is what my pedi suggested (although this was our intention, it wasn't how things played out for us): When ds was 4 weeks old, we saw the blood in diaper and found out about the dairy allergy, I pumped, and stored the bm in deep freezer, while i was transitioning to dairy free. I was told the dairy could stay in bm for up to 2 weeks. I labeled that milk as dairy so I knew it had dairy in it. With the intention of when he was 6 months old, we would feed him one of those bottles to see what happened. If you didn't save any of your bm from that time, you can try a formula that has dairy in it. If you don't already have this formula, I'd think that your pedi office should have a sample you could have to do this test.
our situation: I was really good about removing dairy from my diet, but was always fearful that I had some amount of dairy in restaurant/catered food. (The waiters say it's dairy free, but I could never really trust them). At about 6 months, ds started having rashes. We thought I had eaten dairy by accident. So we didn't try our planned dairy test on him. Then, after the rashes didn't go away, we had him allergy tested at about 8 months old with the allergist. Found out he was no longer allergic to dairy. So, I went back on dairy and he started drinking my stored bm. Turned out he has eczema.
So check with your pedi office, just in case you have a different situation. But at his age, I'd think you could either have him allergy tested by an allergist (little painful for him and you, and takes about 3 hours). Or you can give him a bottle of formula or your old bm with dairy in it. Or you can maybe give him a sliver of cheese. This way, if he still has a dairy allergy, you won't have ruined your bm for 2 weeks by eating dairy.