Food Allergy Testing

Since I don't ever talk about my sons food allergies on my family blog, and this is my dairy free blog- I guess I get to give his updates on here!

Last year we had high hopes for our son's food allergies improving. Going into the testing he had dairy and egg allergies, and when we got him tested he had outgrown the egg allergies, but still tested positive for dairy, as well as soy and baker's yeast. I tried giving my son bread that contained no yeast and he had sandwiches made with tortillas instead of bread. I did this for about 2 months and then gave up after lots of tears and headache. I decided I wasn't going to eliminate a food that he didn't show any outward effects to, so I didn't. I did however switch my son to rice milk, and rice yogurt, etc.

This years testing was a lot different. I now realize that he may not ever outgrow these food allergies, and that's okay. All that I really hope for is to see some improvement. I also switched to an allergist that was more child friendly since I wasn't at all impressed with the first. He agreed with me about the yeast. If it wasn't showing any effects on him when he ate it, then it was most likely a false positive. (Such a different attitude than the allergist that testing him positive and said absolutely no yeast whatsoever, not even in saltine crackers). The results this time showed that he was positive to milk, but negative to soy. I'm so excited about that because in my local grocery stores rice products are impossible to find. I have to pay 2.50 at a natural foods store if I want to treat my son with a rice yogurt. Soy yogurts are like .89 cents at Smiths- so yeah to that! :)

As far as the milk allergies go, we had to also get a blood test taken since the first allergist didn't measure in a number the skin test and there was nothing to compare with. So we got his blood test taken to compare with the one he got taken at 18 months old. At 18 months he scored a 21 (anything over a 3 is a positive reaction). Well now at 3 1/2 years old he scored an 80. We are really bummed that it has gotten so much worse, but there's not much else we can do besides keep going strong doing what we are doing! The allergist reminded me that 1 in every 10 kids don't outgrow their allergies. I have to keep positive and remember that there are a lot of kids who have multiple food allergies, and that there we are lucky there are still a lot of really yummy foods he can eat