My children have food allergies. A lot of food allergies. I have cried many nights because of the stress that cooking for our family created. We are on a tight budget and have three small children that keep me very busy. I am homeschooling and working part time at our church. Time and money are both big issues for our family. This blog has been created to help out other families that are in similar predicaments. My recipes will always be free from corn, dairy, soy, egg and all nuts. Wheat is something we have not had issues with, but some of the recipes will be wheat free as well.
Here is our story. When my first daughter was born I was committed to nursing. The problem was that she was not an efficient nurser and my milk supply was very low. So we made the decision to supplement with bottles after each feeding. We noticed that as soon as we introduced the bottles she got sick. It was like a cold that just wouldn't leave. She was always congested and sneezing and had a lot of ear infections. The pediatrician recommended switching to a soy based formula. Overnight she got better. We determined that she had a dairy allergy. A year and a half later my second daughter was born. I was committed to nursing her as well. Colic does not even begin to describe how horrible her first three months of life were.The first three months were filled with screaming and crying, from both of us. She was gaining weight, but she screamed all the time and she had blood in her stool along with blisters all around her rectum. I had removed dairy from my diet from the beginning so the pediatrician knew something else was going on. We put her on reflux medicine, but it still didn't help. Then she stopped gaining weight and started losing weight. I was told to stop nursing and give her soy based formula. She got worse and worse. We tried several types of formula and finally settled on Nutramigen. It didn't solve everything, but it was the best thing we could find. She started gaining weight again and slept a little. Allergy testing showed that she was allergic to dairy and soy.
A year and a half later my son was born. I decided to nurse him as well even though I knew it might be for a short time like it had been for my second child. The first two weeks I stayed clear of dairy and soy and he was doing great. Nursing really well, sleeping great and gaining a ton of weight. The night he turned exactly two weeks old is one I will never forget. He started crying around 8:00 p.m. He didn't stop. I thought for sure something was seriously wrong. We went to the doctor the next morning and they put him on reflux medicine immediately. Things did not improve, but the doctor said it could take up to sixth weeks before we could really tell. I knew it wasn't working and so I started writing down everything I ate and how he was each day. I researched things like what the most allergenic foods were and started removing them one by one. When we went in to his three month check-up the doctor was very worried. I looked like death and he was diagnosed as failure to thrive. He had stopped growing. We were sent to a GI specialist. (He was my best friend for a while.) We talked about the strides I had made in removing certain foods from my diet and he made suggestions on formulas to try. Well, my son wanted nothing to do with a bottle. We spent a fortune on every kind of bottle out there. Even if we had found a formula that would work for him we couldn't get him to take a bottle. It was horrible. The GI specialist suggested solid food; he was four months old. Things like bananas and sweet potatoes would be a good start. We put brown sugar in bananas and EVOO in the sweet potatoes trying to build up the calorie content while still nursing and avoiding everything I could think of that was causing him to have problems. At seven months he was only thirteen pounds. I was still nursing him every two hours around the clock. At this point, being committed to a mental institution sounded like a pleasant break from life.
I had three small kids and had not slept in over seven months. Then a break through happened. Adiri bottles and goat's milk. We had run out of options and were about to do a feeding tube. Someone introduced me to the Adiri bottles and I bought one. I was pumping after every feeding and putting my milk in the bottles. He would actually drink from it! So that was the first step. Then around nine months the GI specialist and I decided to try goat's milk. His weight gain was meager to say the least even on all of the solid foods laden with extra fat and calories. I was ready to die so I agreed to do it with great hesitation. I mixed goat's milk with mollasas and mint flavored cod liver oil. He actually drank it and the extra calories were just what he needed. By his first year check-up he was on the growth charts again. The fourth percentile never looked so good :) He was still having breakouts of hives regularly and the eczema never would go away. I struggled with cooking for him as well as for our family because he had reached the age where he wanted what we were having and wouldn't eat otherwise. Fast forward to the week of his second birthday. He went anaphylactic after grabbing two bites of his sister's pb&j sandwich. We had some food allergy testing done and sure enough he is allergic to every kind of nut out there, except for pecan. We had to give away our cat too :( He had not gained any weight or grown in height in six months and the pediatrician diagnosed him as failure to thrive again. We put him on an appetite stimulant and gave him every high fat food we could think of to which he was not allergic. It was killing our food budget and stressing me out to no end. I was feeding him every two hours again but he did start growing again. Fortunately the goat's milk offered us many options in his diet. It was a high fat milk and they made butter, yogurt and cheese that I could give him.
That was when I got serious about cooking. I needed foods that all five of us would eat and that would not break the bank, they had to be high in fat and calories. I love to cook and come from a family of great cooks. The food had to taste good. So here is where I am. I experiment a lot and will only post recipes that I have gotten to where I want them: they must taste great, be easy on the budget and my kids love it. If you try them, I would love to get your feedback. When I have enough recipes I will be compiling them into a cookbook. It may take me two years, but I am determined to do it. I hope that this blog is a blessing to you and your fmaily and I pray that it helps in some small way.
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