Brief Jade Update – 1/4/07

Happy New Year, everyone!

It’s been awesome to look back over the past year and just see how faithful God has been to not only our family, but many families we know and love.

Jade is doing well. She’s crawling, sitting and pulling up now, and with that, getting into all kinds of mischief. She has also finally popped out that first tooth. Just barely – but it’s finally visible. She was already doing better weight and nursing-wise (MUCH better with nursing ), but we’ve started her back on solid foods, and she’s gaining weight even better. She has gained over half a pound just in the past week alone! So far her favorite food is avocados, with bananas being a close second.

Jade - Pulling up

We got a health update yesterday when we took her to the local allergist just to have her tested for her food allergies. They did a skin test to test her for allergies to milk, egg white, egg yolk, whole eggs, wheat, soy, peanuts, and then, when I saw oats in the little testing box, I went ahead and had them test her for oats, since I’d been eating a lot of oat flour as a wheat replacement.

She tested positive, developing vivid little welts almost immediately, for milk, eggs (all parts) and, get this, oats!

She seemed to test negatively for peanuts, soy and wheat, so I’m thinking it’s possible her “wheat” allergy was actually a reaction to eggs that were present in whatever had the wheat (bread, most likely).

The doctor went ahead and ordered a blood test on all 8 allergens, just so we’re sure, and know to what degree. He said the blood tests could still show some allergy to some of the others she had a negative skin reaction to, but for now I’m just going to concentrate on eliminating eggs, in addition to dairy.

The egg allergy explains why she got a little bit of rash around her mouth when I let her taste scrambled eggs not too long ago. I thought it was just sensitive skin (which she does have), but it was apparently an allergic reaction. Glad I hadn’t fed her it any more than I did. Any kind of rash reaction kind of scares me, because if it can inflame the skin around the mouth, it could also produce inflammation in her mouth or throat. Not something we want to mess around with. I’ve been making her baby food, so that’ll be very easy to police, as far as direct exposure.

Kind of having to re-think my breakfast options, since I’ve been eating mostly either scrambled eggs or oatmeal in the mornings. No more oat flour (at least for me and Jade) baked goods, no eggs, no mayo. I guess those dairy/wheat free pies I made weren’t so great for her after all. I did find some commercial and recipes for egg-free egg replacements, but I’m kind of tentative about baking anything until I know what she can have. After all, oat turned out to be a no-no, and I thought that was safe. Perhaps I can go back to whole wheat if the blood test comes back negative, and she’ll tolerate it. Of course, not being allergic to wheat doesn’t rule out celiac disease (My Mom can’t eat wheat or any gluten, so there is a history), but I’m going to pray that’s not her issue.

Right now we’re sticking to rice pastas from the Asian Market, since they’re just rice flour and water. It’s a decent alternative. Although meat is not an issue, and I’ll continue to eat meat, we’ll probably be buying/using a lot of vegan products, since they’re guaranteed egg and dairy free. Little Grill, here we come.

The doctor had us buy her an EpiPen yesterday, which was weird. Hopefully she’ll never need it – I hear a lot of people never use theirs – but it sure was strange to go from just avoiding certain foods, because they upset her tummy, to finding out she could possibly have a more serious respiratory reaction and that we need to be prepared, just in case.

Alvin did find a site yesterday, KidsHealth.org, that had some great information, tips and these little printable allergy cards. I think that’ll be really helpful when shopping and reading labels.

If anyone’s curious what is included in egg and dairy allergies, here are the cards:Egg Allergy

Milk Allergy

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