want to go raw but baby severe allergies!

[Platypus Girl]

hi everyone,

i need some help with this one, please! my son is 18 months, i'm still breastfeeding him, and he was born with severe allergies to wheat, dairy, milk products, peanuts, dustmite, and has sensitivity to soy and goat's milk. he also has to stay away from high salicylate foods or his eczema flares up. since i've gone 80% raw, and last two days him too, he actually is eating raw vegies and heaps of bananas and loves smoothies. he just helps himself all day and i try to have dehydrated snacks ready for him, but not sure what to feed him with his allergies.
many dessert recipes call for nuts, which they said he was allergic to, but i gave him some macademia cream, and he didn't get anaphylaxis past week after eating it several times! neither when he had some raw vegies with pine nut dressing!???
he used to only live on breastmilk, apples/pears, rice milk, cooked rice, rice crackers, broccoli cooked. but now he actually chomps into raw vegies YAY!!!! but his eczema has flared up and he gets itchy red cheeks.....is that cos i give him tropical fruits and vegies high in salicylates, or cos he is detoxing? should i just stick with the whole raw diet? he even loves dates, and he's not 'supposed' to have those as they are high salicylate....
do you reckon just test him? adn persevere????
your comments much appreciated!!!!!

[cherrypie]

are you giving him blueberries, strawberries and oranges? these were foods who made my sons eczema worse when he was a baby. at one point I started to sneak green blue algae from lake kalamat into his food and that helped a lot whith his skin- he turns 3 in two weeks and has almost outgrown it. The best supplement comes in a liquid (organic apple juice and the algae), thats very good and is sold by a british nutritionist called gillian mckeith- http://www.gillianmckeith.info/

[Platypus Girl]

Hi, thanks for that. i checked out your linnk, but we'll see how he goes with slow and careful monitoring. please see my comment as well under your post about nut allergies at school....

he is seeing his immunologist on 12 january, so he'll porbably get another skin prick test to see how his allergies are now. he gets tested every 3 months, and we have to adjust his diet as he's growing. hopefully he'll grow out of it, otherwise we just make adjustments and eat the foods from God's earth that we can, without harm.

i'm still breastfeeding him, and both our food allergies are similar, so what he can eat, i make sure i stick to that.

it is amazing now i'm geting into raw, how many dishes that simulate cooked foods, like burgers, buns, most raw desserts, actually are based on a lot of nuts. well, the way i see it, substitute with what you can have!

thanks again! ;)

[cherrypie]

hi platypus girl, i am struggeling a bit with all these nuts in raw food as well not because i am allergic- maybe i am- because i can not digest them and I even don't like most of them. I really hope you can lessen your allergies a lot becoming raw. I am in the process of talking my husband into raw who can have some really heavy asthma attacks (from cats, dust, mildew).

[rockstar135]

but his eczema has flared up and he gets itchy red cheeks.....is that cos i give him tropical fruits and vegies high in salicylates, or cos he is detoxing?

Neither. It means you're feeding him something he is allergic to.

I have a nephew with the same severe spectrum of allergies. His cheeks only cleared up once all allergens were cleared from his diet.

Start an elimination immediately to find out what you're giving him that's causing the atopic dermatitis.

And it's not a good idea to 'test' to see if he's allergic to things the immunologist says he is.

I myself am allergic to peanuts, tree nuts, sesame seeds (something that is common now along with nut allergies, so never feed him sesame seeds even if he's never been tested for it), and some tropical fruits (I carry an Epi-Pen).

[freshlight]

are you getting organic food for your baby? Perhaps he is allergic to all those chemicals (which is not a bad thing :) ) I know people who are. Take care and all the best to your family!
Eva

[Platypus Girl]

thanks for the replies so far! i'll switch to giving him organic fruit and veg only, see if that clears up. and will watch the high salicylate foods.:)

[ShantiLove]

I was just thinking that insted of nuts you can use avocado and sprouts. Check out the sproutman Steve Meyerowitz. He wrote several books on how to use sprouts. I even belive there are recepies on how to make dehydratet foods like "breads" from sprouts.
Can you do buckwheat ? soaked buckwheats are great to ad to dehydratet crackers. What about flax seeds ? or you can try chia seeds ? Zuccini can be used as a filler aswell.
Zuzzini cut in lengthwise slices in an ok thinkness is a great "bread" to ad stuff on top. Different leaves can be used aswell to make wrappers.
Maby you can have hempseeds ? they are a bit differnet than most seeds and nuts. I cant have most nuts and seeds either, but I have no problems with hempseeds.

[oceanluv]

Platypus girl, I think organic foods can make a big difference for your baby. when i eat non-organic apples, pears, etc. my lips and tongue burn for hours afterwards. for a long time I thought I was allergic to all kinds of fruits, but since I have switched to organic, I no longer have that problem. yeah!!

[domestic goddess]

Just because your baby is not reacting to the nuts you are giving him, does not mean its ok! I am allergic to tree nuts and peanuts and used to eat some nuts occasionally and one of the thing my allergist told me was that you never know when *that* time will be, meaning the time you really go into anaphylaxis. I carry an epi now for that reason. (several actually, lol)

I use pepitas and sunfower seeds in place of nuts in all recipes. Workd for me. I also don't make many things, prefering to eat whole foods instead. Honestly, I would stick with that with your baby as well. The things he gets used to now will shape his future eating. Make sure he is getting plenty of good fats, whole foods, etc. ALso, one thing you may want to do is mono meals, especially with an allergic kiddo. Thatway you can monitor reactions and really know what it was from. If you give him smoothies, crackers, etc, etc there is no way of knowing what he is reacting to.

Hang in there, many of his allergies he may grow out of, though the nut allergies are usually for life. (speaking from experience as the mom to 3 allergic kids with allergies herself)

ETA: sometimes it takes a day or so for reactions to show up. The red cheeks could be from the nuts!