Dietitian appointment!!!!

So I found out that even though we don't have an allergist or GI available for B to see, our hospital does in fact have a dietitian. I asked B's doctor for a referral, thinking that you can never really have too much information and a fresh pair of eyes might see something differently than how we have been seeing things. 

The appointment was awesome!!!! He spent a ton of time with us and really went over everything--- some information we already knew but he did have some interesting new things to say. He recommended that for our at home food trials (we will do some hospital ones once we are back in the states!) we focus on balancing out her "food groups" as much as possible, rather than focusing on just random vitamin-packed foods (which is what we have been doing). The plan is to continue breast feeding at least until age two and try to get three foods each in the categories of grains, veggies and fruits. He recommended holding off on meats for now, especially waiting on beef as well as the typical FPIES poultry triggers. He said that based on how she is doing nutrition-wise and so long as she continues to nurse well, she doesn't really have a need for meats in her diet at this point. This made the vegetarian in me jump for joy! Now don't get me wrong-- I am pretty darn sure my B will end up being a happy little meat eater like her Daddy and I have nothing against that-- I am just worried because she has reacted to SO many things and I had such sensitivities to meats as a child, she might have issues if we start too early for her. I am still excluding squashes from my diet after we figured out that she was having minor reaction symptoms to THAT, and I still am continuing with a somewhat modified diet (this started shortly after she was born so this is nothing new. Very limited soy, limited dairy, and a few others). Since I am vegetarian and have some modifications to what my normal diet would be, he did make some recommendations for my diet-- continue with prenatals (of course!!!), start eating a fortified cereal, and continue trying to add a little more dairy in if I can (I just recently added yogurt back in). 

Another interesting thing he mentioned, was that in his reading he saw that some kiddos actually react to probiotics in things like yogurt, so other than the probiotics naturally occuring in breastmilk, he recommended steering clear of those for now. He went over the protein make-up of some of her safe and unsafe foods and that was pretty interesting. He mentioned some foods that correlated with others in protein make-up and that we might want to be a little more careful with those foods because of the similarities. One that he mentioned was olive oil-- he said that olives and avocados are very similar in their make-up and since she had such a severe reaction to avocados, we might want to be a little more cautious about introducing anything with olive oil. (We use canola anyways, so not a big deal). 

And for the brag. . . . :) He said B is doing great with her finger foods and that she is probably getting enough calories from her solids, as appropriate for her age. He said that her weight and height looked good, and she looked nutritionally "well." (She started gaining weight again at the beginning of this month! Yay!)  He said she is also communicating really well (I know it is unrelated, but still, I gotta brag!), with her signs and actual talking. He mentioned trying a spoon with her to see if she will feed herself and so this morning I did and lo and behold, she didn't do such a  bad job. She loved it!!! So we may start practicing that a little day to day. . .

He is also going to send our info along to one of the specialist dietitians at the San Diego hospital and will get back to us regarding what she says. So all in all, one awesome awesome appointment. I feel like we have a solid plan for the next few food trials (spinach is on the docket for the next one!) and I feel like we got some really useful, practical information. Hooray!!!!