Freddie's Allergy Issues

Over the last few years, well since around May 2016, we began to realise Freddie had issues with some foods. 

When he was weaning, we followed all the guidelines and introduced him to full fat cows milk in his foods. Then when it came to swapping him from formula to cows milk we realised there was definitely a problem. The first day we tried he had around 4oz of full fat cows milk over around 12 hours and that night he was a nightmare! He was grumbly, he had a gassy stomach, he was only sleeping for around an hour or two at the most. He then got very bunged up and didn't go for a number two for three days! We thought he wasn't ready for full fat milk, so stopped giving it to him. When we tried again a couple of months later the same things happened.

We then approached out GP who suggested as mummy cannot tolerate full fat dairy products maybe Freddie was the same, so they suggested keeping him on the 1-2 years toddler formula and then moving him to green top cows milk when he was 18 months old. 

So 18 months came and we slowly started swapping an ounce for an ounce, so replaced an ounce of formula for an ounce of green top. By the time James birthday arrived in the August, Freddie was fully on green top and we saw there was definitely a problem still. His sleep was horrendous and he wasn't going to the toilet for number twos very often and when he did he would be screaming his head off. So it was back to the GP who prescribed him movicol. Even with that he was still struggling.

Then he reached his second birthday and he was ill. He spent the whole night before his birthday vomiting, yet he was still crying for his milk. So we mixed his milk with some water. We kept giving it to him like that for a few days to make sure the bug was out of his system.

We soon noticed that he wasn't needing the movicol in is milk, so it was back to the GP who referred him to the hospital. This was when we started to suspect that he was having an issues with all things dairy, so we decided to take him dairy free to see if it helped! And it did! We moved Freddie onto almond milk to see if it helped in and after a couple of weeks he was starting to sleep a whole lot better. 

After a few months on the almond milk we decided to try him on Soya milk as we knew this could be bought in individual sized cartons, the idea was that if he settled on it we would purchase the cartons and he could take them with him once he started nursery. The day after he first tried soya milk we noticed he was having a lot of runny nappies one after another. We didn't think much of it till a few days later when he started to be very wheezy and coughing a lot. He was still having really bad nappies so I started to look online and found that the symptoms he was having matched soya allergy. So we immediately put him back onto almond milk. 

When his hospital appointment finally arrived he was in and out and told he had intolerance to dairy and soya. He was then referred to the dietitians. 

We saw the dietitian in the November who basically said keep him as he was and we would see her again a few months later. By the time he saw the dietitian again in the February we had taken him wheat free as we suspected wheat was the cause of the issues he was still having. And he was so much better! The dietitian team then referred him back to hospital where he was officially diagnosed as Non Ige Allergic to Dairy, Soya and Wheat. 

It is still very much a learning curve for us as the diagnosis is still very new, and finding things Freddie can and can't eat. If you have any tips please leave them in comments below or email us!