Saturday, December 12, 2009

Lyla's Troubles




Many of you already know that Dave and I produce highly allergic babies. Sasha was allergic to milk, but she out grew it and now she is only allergic to eggs and peanuts. Sasha's situation plus Lyla's eczema made me decide to get Lyla tested at six months old, only to find that she too was allergic to milk. Over the last few months as baby Lyla started eating baby food, we've had a few to many barf days with her. It seemed like rice cereal was a problem, and then she had corn and we noticed a problem as well. She would eat a meal with one of these offenders and two hours later she would be full on throwing up. Not spitting up, but vomiting again and again for a couple of hours or until she was down to stomach bile. She would be worn out and lethargic after these episodes and I finally decided we needed to go back to the doctor to see what was up. She was retested for allergies and she was positive for wheat and milk this time. Hopefully she will out grow both of these, but she wasn't "allergic" to rice. Instead we found out that she has a rare condition called Food protein induce entercolits syndrome, or "F-PIES" for short. There are a large variety of "trigger" foods, which include cereal grains like wheat, oats, rice and barley, other things like soy or milk, and possibly even poultry. Her GI tract can't process these foods, and so once she's eaten them it takes up to two hours for her to have this violent reaction where her body just tries to get rid of the offender. We know for sure that rice is a problem for her, but since she is still eating baby food, we don't know what else will be a trigger for her. The only way to find out is to give her something new, but we are only supposed to do that with the consent of her doctor, at the office or at the hospital since she can dehydrate so quickly. I am trying not to think to far into the future with this because there isn't going to be a lot of food options left that a toddler will like. From what I've read online, it looks like she has a good chance of getting over this by the time she is three, but there is no way of knowing right now. I am going to try to fatten her up if she'll let me. I figure a little cushion is probably the best thing for her right now. She loves her baby food fruit and vegetables, so hopefully we can stick with those for a while to come. I'll keep you posted if we find out anything else about it.

1 comment:

  1. Reminding you that you are not alone in this crazy FPIES journey! :) Some day we will be looking back on the days that our kids couldn't eat/drink milk or rice while we watch them drink chocolate milk and eat rice krispies(that is my hope at least!).

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