Allergist Update!

We saw the allergist last month and it didn't go as well as we hoped.

Cooper refused to eat the foods we were trying to trial,

and we had only officially fully trialed one food in 3 months. 

Typically they hope to have at least 3 in that time frame.

So at the time, his safe foods were: 

Apples,

carrots,

bananas,

and white potatoes.

We fully trialed coconut and that is safe for him

 (as far as no symptoms, when he has trialed more foods, we will scope to know for sure), 

but that is all we were able to do since he wasn't interested in the other foods he could have.

He was trialing avocado, but he didn't want to eat it and we have been working on it in feeding therapy.

You need at least one to three serving per day of a food, for at least 2 weeks (3-4 in Cooper's case) to check for symptoms, to fully trial a food. 

The way things were going, he wasn't getting that amount.

Which is frustrating because if he refuses to eat it, you can't move on and say he passed it or not until he does.

The issues with Cooper in general, trialing foods and Feeding therapy are that:

1. He has had the same foods for 10 months, and now that he is getting older he knows which foods are safe for him and he recognizes them, and anything new scares him.

2. He doesn't like medium textures. He only likes liquid state, like applesauce, or hard state, like chips and carrots.

3. He is a 2 year old, which brings a whole other difficulty to the problem.

4. He doesn't have an appetite because he gets all of his calories for the day in the form of formula, per the Doctors instructions.

So when we went in and talked to the doctor, we decided to try a different approach this time.

We are going to continue trialing avocado.

but we will also be adding strawberries and....

Wait for it...

CHICKEN!!!!

WOOT WOOT!

As exciting as that is, we still won't be able to order plain chicken breasts when we are at restaurants because of additives in mass purchased chicken. 

A lot of meats are injected with dairy and other things Cooper can't have, so we have to buy natural, organic, non injected chicken and we have to check the labels.

And there is also the issue of him refusing to eat that as well because of the texture and because it is new...

If cooper doesn't want to eat the foods, we will blend them with liquid to do a blended bolus feed.

That kind of worries me, because when we were introducing coconut, we put a small amount of coconut oil in his tube a few times.

He didn't tolerate that well and as Cooper would say, he "spilled it".

There also is the issue that if I am adding more foods in liquid form to Cooper's tube, he won't be able to get his total volume from formula for the day, because he can't tolerate more than the 32 oz he has a day.

We are working at getting these foods trialed and getting a scope done in the next few months, as well as adjusting his calories and replacing some of them with the blended diet so we can trial foods and move on.

We are also working on getting him to eat the new foods orally in feeding therapy, because the whole point of adding solids is to eventually get the tube taken out. 

 IF, and that is a big "if", there are enough safe foods for him to eat, to be able to grow without needing formula or without using the tube, we can work towards eventually having it removed in the future.

So little man, 

let's kick this food trial's butt!!