Update on the Milk Allergy

It's been several months since we've given Noelle anything with milk, and Chris and I had been wanting to try it out again. This past Saturday was when we decided to go for it, that way Chris would be home to help me if there were messes to clean up. To make a long story short, she is still allergic. Here's what happened Saturday:

We tried giving her yogurt with breakfast, and she screamed bloody-murder and wouldn't even try it! We even got a bite into her mouth while she was screaming, thinking she would like it if she tried it, and she just screamed more and spit it out. Strike one. Then we thought we'd mix some regular milk in with her rice milk. No such luck...she made a horrible face like we had just given her castor oil or something. (Not that I've ever tried that stuff.) Strike two. At this point, we didn't know what to do, so I sent Chris to the store for a particular brand of rice cereal that has whey protein in it, and also some ice cream. By now, we're pretty sure that Noelle thought something was up, and she got very suspicious every time we put her in the high chair. Poor girl. What finally did the trick was mixing the cereal with some applesauce. She ate about 1 or 2 tablespoons worth of the cereal, and within 15 minutes she threw up and started breaking out in hives. We gave her benadryl and all ended up fine. Luckily, this was the only time she got sick. But she is definitely still allergic! This was one of the quickest reactions that she's had and the first time that I've noticed the rash...so that was really a bummer, especially since she didn't have much of the milk product at all.

Our next step is to try to introduce soy to her again. There are many things on the market that are good substitutions for milk & milk products, but most of them are soy based. We have suspected an intolerance or allergy to soy in the past, but her symptoms were not quite as obvious or as severe as her milk allergy, and may have been caused by other things.

On top of that, she's become a pretty picky eater and hardly ever wants to try anything new. She's even gotten to where she won't eat some of the foods she used to like. She still eats nutritious stuff, there's just not a huge variety. This has been pretty hard for me to deal with, even though I know this is something that is completely normal in toddlers.

Well, that's the latest update on us. Sorry there aren't any pictures to go along with this one, but I don't think you would have wanted any pertaining to this event, anyway. :-)