I did a menu plan this week, but didn’t get around to posting it on Monday. As it turns out, I may as well have not bothered.
After years of agonising on my part about her behaviour, eating habits (or lack thereof) and general health, an allergy test yesterday showed Kiki (and likely Miss Moo) is allergic to: weat/gluten, all dairy (including sheep and goat dairy) and soy.
If you can imagine, that pretty much exludes so much of her already limited diet of yoghurt, milk, cereals, breads, cheeses, pastas and rice.
The doctor has been fantastic, and loaded me up with reading material, lists of books to track down (including recipe books) and a promise of a referral to a dietician if we see an improvement with replacing or cutting out these foods.
On the plus side, I have so far found gluten, dairy and soy free: bread mix, milk, pasta, biscuits, butter replacement, flour, cereal and noodles.
Kiki is excited about the prospect of these new foods (which she helped me shop for) and the fact her stomach is likely to stop hurting in a week or so. To be perfectly honest, so am I.
It has been a long road to get to this point, starting I guess when she was 6 weeks old and I was crying on the phone to the health nurse because she wouldn’t feed or sleep or stop screaming. She has only started reliably (ie more often than not) sleeping through the night in the last 18 months. If she eats too much lactose or rich foods she vomits.
She is still complaining of a sore tummy today, but she is already much happier and loves a lot of her new food (most of which she has eaten before anyway.
So now I’m on the lookout for new recipe’s to try for the whole family (I figure if 2/5 of us have it, it’s likely the rest of us will feel better if we all eat this way) and ways of modifying my favourites (the doctor has already given me a variation for my apricot chicken I’m keen to try) in keeping with our new diet.
If you have any you would like to share, or websites you know of, feel free to leave links to them in the comments (or use the contact form).