Feeling Discouraged

It's been 3 weeks or so since I've talked with the ped about Madison's allergy issues. I've been reading boards, perusing magazines, talking with people and buying products. It's frustrating spending hours poring over ingredient labels and recipes, spending extra money on special products and then having my girl turn up her nose at them.

It's frustrating find products that *almost* fit the bill. It's frustrating that everything on the market, especially in traditional grocery stores, have soy in them. It's incredibly frustrating to break my little girl's heart time and again when I tell her no she cannot have something, and it's always the yummy things.

It's frustrating to go to a gathering or restaurant and try to figure out safe foods. It's frustrating not being able to pop into the drive-thru for a quick meal on the run or throw a pizza or nuggets into the oven for a fast dinner. It's heartbreaking when my son complains that it's her fault we have to spend so much time in the store.

It must be terribly frustrating for my sweet little girl to be denied things she's always eaten and can no longer have. Comfort foods, special treats and sweeties are now off limits to her.

I need to work on finding alternate recipes that are tastey and fun to eat. I need new nuggets, cookies, muffins, pancakes, waffles, just to name a few. I'm getting some lovely recipes and support from some friends. I found a great magazine via J entitled Living Without. I'm sure I'll find more resources as I go along. I'm also kind of mourning the things we won't be having/keeping in the house out of support for Madison.

Within a week after eliminating cow's milk, the rash was about 98% gone. So quickly too! Unfortunately, she had a flare up over the weekend so I'm not sure what triggered it. Hopefully not the goat butter because I can use that in baking. I need it! We'll just keep trucking along. She'll be off soy at least a year and probably cow's milk and eggs as well. I think those were all Class 6 allergans. That's a long time but hopefully that'll give her body a chance to get the allergans out of her system and let it heal. Then we can reintroduce the allergans after that at some point to see which ones cause reactions still. I anticipate that we'll all be a little healthier and have better eating habits a year from now.