First Birthday for Son with Potential Allergies

My MIL and SIL have celiac's also and for cakes/muffins they use a brand of mix called "Namaste". It's sooooooo tasty and even me as a non-celiac sufferer, I love it!

What about Coconut Bliss? It tastes a lot like icecream but is dairy free and completely delicious. It's made from coconut milk, agave for sweetening, and then chocolate or other flavors.

I too am gluten intolerant and will be waitig to introduce wheat to my daughter until after her 1st bday. I'm lucky enough to be able to pop down to one of a handful of gluten free bakeries in my area to pick up her 1st bday cake. If you're not so lucky in Wasilla, check out Bob's Red Mill online for all those crazy wheat/gluten free ingredients. They have good pre-made cake mixes. Good pancake, bread and brownie mixes as well! good luck!

are you keeping your son off wheat because of your husbands allergies? Is his actual allergy or celiac disease? they are different. Do you eat wheat? Because if you breast feed.. anything you eat that your son might be allergic to will pass on to him through your breast milk. I would highly recommend that if you are concerned your son might have inherited some allergies that you get him tested. He is young and some allergies may not show up yet.. but you will at least get a baseline. No sense in depriving him of some certain foods if he is not allergic himself. My husband and I do not have any food allergies that we know of - yet out of our five children - we have only two that have turned up with food allergies.. and only one of those have Ige mediated allergies. (there is another type called cell mediated not heard of much til recently in fact it is relatively "new" to the medical community)

You are quite smart to be cautious.. to stay on the safe side knowing of the possibilities... I also think it will take a load of your mind if you know for sure.. so find a good allergist and have your son tested.

Hi H.,
Why not just try an alternative/lactose-free ice cream? or a frozen fruit smoothie? Save the cake for next year, when you will have more energy, and your son will remember it more. In the meantime, work on the slow introduction of foods. While lactose intolerance has some racial/genetic components, and tends to be inherited, only the potential for allergies is inherited, not the specific allergy. If your son develops allergies, they may be different from his dad's. Just go slow, watch carefully, and have fun helping him explore this new world.
L.

I made banana bread muffins for my daughter's 1st birthday and it worked well. You could just use your normal banana bread recipe and substitute as needed. I think I used this one: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Banana-Banana-Bread/Detail.aspx

Greetings!

Birthdays are so fun!! For something fun for the little one and everyone 'watching' the little one have fun you might try some yoghurt with fresh berries....blueberries are usually a favorite for little guys. Then you still get the super cute food all over the face pictures without the sugar blues. I'm in awe that many people use the first birthday to introduce the insanity of blood sugar bouncing all over the place.
When he is a little bit older and you are ready for some cake or cupcakes try the morning glory bakery in freemont. They make homemade wheat, egg, soy, and dairy free treats. It is what we do for my nephew and he loves it!! Has no idea he is eating garbanzo bean flour!!
If you search an amazon I know that there are several cook books for cooking with or cooking for children with wheat allergies. When I was looking for my sister I found a few recipies hear and there on the internet but not one nice consise website.

Best of Luck!!

L.

Hi!

I have very severe celiac sprue and I want to start by giving you a huge high five for working so hard to do the best for your wee one. I was diagnosed at 30 (I won't go into any discussion of how I went so long with such severe symptoms and no diagnosis). Celiac, as opposed to just wheat alergy, means that I cannot have wheat, barley, oats, or rye. I have two little ones and both were tested at the age if 2 and neither has the desease (the doctors have told me that they will not test earlier than two, so you'll have one more year to wait - but believe me, if your son has it you'll know before the testing!) It is important that I note, you won't know unless the baby is exposed to it and the test won't return any useful results unless he's been exposed to it. Don't be afraid to try a few crackers or noodles and see what happens.

When it comes to feeding solids, personally, I made the food myself. Steamed veggies from my dinner went into the food processor and we were all happy. This made me certain of the ingredients and was certainly cheaper than grocery store food...and was incredibly easy! Extras went into an ice tray in the freezer for another day (just pop out the little frozen cube, microwave until thawed, and you are good to go).

Here is the thing with wheat alergy - the FDA has made some changes over the recent years and the labels are getting A LOT easier to read. A lot of shops offer guides and special aisles to help shoppers and restaurants have special menus that show the consumer which products are gluten free and lactose free. When I was first learning to shop for foods I stuck to the health food store because the lables were simple - if it had flour, it said 'whole wheat flour' and did not read 'semolina' or any of the other crazy names for wheat thickeners. With a little practice it was easy to gain confidence to go back to the regular grocery store. My personal favorites for gf breads and cakes is Bob's Red Mill and Pam's Naturals which are both available at regular grocery stores. If the aisle in the supermarket is intimidating try glutenfreemall.com There are MANY other sites like it, but, the products at each of the sites are all about the same. Many of them are yucky and to tell you the truth I genereally stay away from the specialty gf foods but the corn or rice pastas are good and the two companies I mentioned earlier have never failed me.

Lastly, as someone who lives with this I want to add that I work very hard not to make a big deal out of it. I can't eat that stuff, so what! It is really easy to live with if you just relax and work with it.

Good luck

*K

Hi H.,

I have a peanut and egg allergic son. I belong to a wonderful local group - FEAST at www.washingtonfoodallergy.org. I've seen Cherrybrook Kitchen products recommended by members in that group. They have gluten free cake mixes. See http://www.cherrybrookkitchen.com/products/gf.php.

FEAST has a great list serve. It has helped me more than anything else - including doctors - to navigate the world of food allergies. I'm sure you are already discussing all of this with your pediatrician, but if not, make sure to talk to him/her about how to introduce foods. Hopefully you will find that your son doesn't have any issues!

C.

Hi H.,
For cooking choices, try the book Cooking Without, it has great recipes without gluten and dairy.

My 16 month old son had an allergy to dairy until about 3 month ago, so I simply did not give any to him. He has now grown out of his allergy and takes yoghurt, cheese and milk.

For his first birthday, there where a lot of pressure on me by my in-laws to give him cake, he had never had anything sweet or store bought. So I gave in and bough a small vegan, gluten free cup cake and put a birthday candle in to make it festive. Obviously, he nearly choked from the taste not being used to anything sweet. I realised that being only 1 year old it really did not matter to him what he got and that the whole cake/sweet thing was only for amusement of the adults. I took the cake away and he had a lovely juicy plum, he was so happy.

Since you son I happy with nursing, perhaps that really all he wants for his birthday :-)

Enjoy his day and your family.

For baking, I substitute brown rice flour for the wheat flour and add a few tablespoons of tapioca flour and a little xanthan gum to hold things together. Instead of milk, you can use soy or rice milk but often I just use water for the liquid and most things turn out just fine. We make cakes this way, as well as cookies and pie crust. It's all a little crumbly without the gluten so cupcakes or smaller cookies stick together better.

There are mixes available to make baked goods. If you can't find them at the store near you, I think Azure Standard food coop can send packages UPS.

If you email me, I can send you wheat-free cake recipes that have worked for us.

With 3 food allergic people in my house, we cook almost exclusively from scratch using "one ingredient foods": meat, rice, potatoes, vegetables, fruit, and spices. I love all the new rice pastas available and shop the Asian market for noodles made from rice, beans and sweet potato. Our food coop is a lifesaver since I can order wheat free breads, bagels and cookies in bulk for a lot less $. Good luck finding "safe" foods in your area.

Hi H.,

I highly reccommend The Cravings Place baking mixes. My youngest wasn't allowed to eat wheat, rye, oats, barley, milk, eggs, peanuts, etc. for a few months and these mixes (they do cake, cookies, pancake etc.) are the best we found. You can get them by the 6 pack from Amazon or individually from www.celiac.com if your local health/natural food store doesn't carry them.

And age two to three is the more common age for allergy testing by skin test. You can have a more expensive blood test done (has to be sent to the mayo clinic) but our allergist explained that the skin tests are more reliable. We did get different results between the two types of test.

F.

Fortunately I do not have food allergies...but I have a friend at work who has been dealing with the same problem with wheat. I stumbled apon this website - I hope that this helps.

http://www.glutenfreeeugene.org/

Have you tried Nature's Market in Kent? They have gluten-free cake mixes (so you just have to add wet) and there is a gluten-free bakery in... Black Diamond?. You could ask them at Natures' Market.
Ask for H. the assistant manager. She has celiac disease herself (and she is my sister.) I'm sure she could come up with a solution for you.

www.naturesmarketkent.com for their contact info

My son has a wheat intolerance as do I, so for his 1st birthday birthday I am making him a crustless pumpkin pie. I'm going to try soy milk instead of evaporated milk, then the only thing new for him will be ginger and nutmeg. I was thinking we would still be getting the messy effect for those great pictures. I had also thought of a wheat free angel food cake or sponge cake or jello mold. Good Luck!

Our son's first birthday was this year. Because my stepmother has a wheat allergy, we made an apple-blueberry crisp, and just substituted spelt flour for the regular.

As for our son- he ate his baby food and could have cared less. We are very cautious with him in regard to sweet stuff, and at 19 months he's had just a little bit of honey on toast, a wee bit of fruit spread and a couple bites of pumpkin bread. Once you introduce sweets, it's hard to go back. And with type 2 diabetes so prevalent, it's good to just be patient with introducing them to everyday sweet stuff. They grow up so quickly. I'm sure you know this from your older children! You must cultivate their palates, certainly, but children rarely need much work in developing a sweet tooth!:)

and Happy Birthday to your littlest One!

Gluten Free Pantry, or Pamela's are great mixes you can find for several traditional treats...cookies, cakes, pancakes etc. I find them both at Fred Meyer, natural food stores or even online. A great magazine and Web site is "Living Without". They have LOTS of resources for those that are living w/o certain foods, especially wheat/gluten, dairy, soy, eggs etc. I believe the web site is as simple as www.livingwithout.com
My son is gluten intolerant. I should have known as an infant when I had to go off of wheat and dairy, but when he started to do ok I went ahead and gave it to him. Well he had terrible behavioral probs for several years. when he was 5 I had him tested and sure enough he is very intollerant to all gluten! dairy is ok in moderate amounts.
Glad to hear you are being more diligent than I was, it will save you lots of emotional toll!!
Good luck, and don't worry....there is now LOTS out there for those on restricted diets.

There's a bakery in Seattle (Fremont) called The Flying Apron. I heard they had another location somewhere in Seattle too, but I don't know where or if it's still around. They have wheat/gluten and dairy free cakes, cup cakes, etc., and they're GOOD. Both of my sons have food allergies (including wheat/gluten) and we get stuff there for their birthday's every year. We did the cupcakes for my sons 4th birthday a few months back, and it was really fun for the kids to each have their own and blow out a candle. (We added some silver bead sprinkles on top to make them more fun.) I heard there's a place in Woodinville as well, but I don't know the name.

Whole Foods might be another place to check out. I've not gone in yet - it's too big and overwhelming for me, but they probably have something. You may want to call their bakery and ask. I know they make vegan cakes.

As for regular wheat free foods, PCC has a decent selction of kids stuff. We get fish sticks and chicken bites, and even some frozen chicken bite meals, which we've used primarily with babysitters. I also shop at vitamin store in Upper Totem Lake Mall (right next to Trader Joe's) that has a small grocery section with a lot of wheat free stuff also (pretzels, good bread, hot dog buns, pizza crust, cookies, breakfast bars). It used to be called Vitality Health, but I think they recently changed their name to Fresh Vitamins or something like that.

There's several different cook books out there too. My two favs are "Wheat-Free, Gluten-Free Cookbook for Kids and Busy Adults" by Connie Sarros, and "Incredible Edible Gluten-Free Food for Kids: 150 Family-Tested Recipes" by Sheri L. Sanderson.

I hope that helps. Good luck!