My daughter is allergic to a whole lot of food items. so when we started weaning for her , it was very difficult . she couldn't eat most of the traditional food that normally a keralite parent would give her child.
When we fed her certain food she started developing eczema, also known as a type of allergic-reddish rash over her face , armpit, below her knees .upon all that she had my mom skin,which is extremely dry in nature.
She was a very active baby beginning from my tummy itself. she never stopped tumbling around in my tummy when she was there.as a tiny infant who was zero months old she was still extremely active throwing her hands and feet every second, here and there. Now that calls for a whole a lot of calories in her diet . she was breast-fed , soleley breast-fed until the age of six months.after that she was weaned initially on Apple purée made by her dad's special gift Phillips Avent.
And gradually as her growth demanded, we continued adding newer food items in her diet.she developed a kind of unidentified , itchy and reddened rash all over her body.later on when milk was added into her diet,cows milk , she developed a more intense rash which appeared on her face and was literally visible to anyone who saw my daughter. this was a sad sight. as concluded by the doctor, it was a milk allergy and it lasted over a month, considering the history of multiple food allergy running in her dad's family, her daddy made a thorough study on food allergies and, multiple disciples for overcoming and managing it.
He advised me Two things regarding introducing new foods to our little girl.
Number one was to introduce only 1 food at a time .
Second one was, A food should be introduced continually for at least three days.
experts claim that, if any kind of allergic reaction appears within three days of introducing a new food,that food would most probably be unsuitable for the child.
But, for my active little baby I couldn't compromise any nutrition based on the assumption that it must be allergic for her . it was a big challenge for me and for her dad to find out which one was suitable for our child and which were not. we had a big task in hand and with a whole lot of support from each other we where able to distinguish between the two.
For a child like ours with multiple food allergy ,parents would handle the situation in three ways
The first type of parent would quit trying and depend on a single suitable nonallergic food for the baby
The second type of parent would provide unsupervised food that they please without any recheck and upon noticing any allergic change would depend on some deadly medicines
Thankfully we belong to a third group, parents who follows the rule of
3i's , meaning
Introduce , Identify and Integrate
This is a very slow and lengthy procedure
First step -we introduce a new food, one food at a time subsequently for three days .
Second step- we observe the child for any developing allergic reaction. This helps identify the suitable food from the unsuitable ones.
Third step-integrating one food with another in order to combine food together. Recipes tried by combination should consist only of those food items which are proven as non-allergic to the child by this method.
Please note :
- Do not introduce snacks or processed food to the child unless each ingredient is checked with the child
- Seek the help of a doctor in case of allergic reaction.
- Parents who are impatient , many tests for food allergy are available in medical centers.
- Once multiple food allergy have has been diagnosed , kindly stay away from harmful steroids and anti-allergic drugs which does not treat the allergic disease but merely cures symptoms.The reaction always subsides by it self by time.
- Stay away from food that Are allergic to the child and teach the child to stay away from those food by themselves once they are two years old.
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