For the birds

Harlan's food trialing has been discouraging to say the least. To date, Harlan can only eat/tolerate 3 foods (pears, mango and spinach). I never thought at 10 months old (wow, already!), my child wouldn't be able to eat practically anything. My goal by his first birthday is to be able to eat a grain, a couple of veggies, various fruits, and a meat of some sort. I guess we have a few of those checked off the list, but it is my intent to get the grain one next. After doing some investigating in the FPIES blogger community, I discovered that "millet" is a common tolerated grain (practically the only one) amongst FPIES kids. I also discovered it is a common bird feed. Well, he does tend to eat like a bird, he is messy, picks at his food, and throws it all on the floor... so heck, this just might work?

 So, I went down to our local Co-op and got "hulled millet" out of the binned grains and came home to google how to cook it.

I boiled it like you would rice, and voila! He loves it!

Not the happiest expression, but he really gobbles it all up. So far, we are on day 3 of it and having no violent reactions. Keep your fingers crossed. His sleep has been disrupted the last few days (a huge indicator of a problem food), but my heart tells me it is because of his teeth (top 4 are all the way in, 3rd bottom one is coming right now, and 3 more are on their way), and activeness, not pain related.

We did finally get a referral from his allergist. He pushed very hard for Harlan to be seen by a pediatric gastroenterologist, so we will be heading to UCSF, hopefully, very soon. I will keep you posted.

 Here are some recent pics of him and the family...

swinging at the Ranch

my pathetic attempt at a picture of Doodle and me

with daddy and cousin Lucas on Turkey Day!

here he is using a wooden puzzle piece as a pacifier...he does this everyday!