{"id":5290,"date":"2014-07-09T08:37:13","date_gmt":"2014-07-09T12:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/?p=5290"},"modified":"2014-07-09T08:58:55","modified_gmt":"2014-07-09T12:58:55","slug":"shopping-for-a-special-diet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/09\/shopping-for-a-special-diet\/","title":{"rendered":"Shopping for a Special Diet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Doodle is 14 months old today and by this point, both girls were eating anything and everything (the only exceptions were nuts and shellfish). \u00a0They were regularly having cow’s milk in a cup (though both were still nursing) and eating whatever the family had for dinner.<\/p>\n

Doodle, though is still on a pretty restricted diet. \u00a0My initial hesitation<\/a> to move him on to new foods as quickly as I did the girls, I now realize must have been a gut instinct that he shouldn’t have it. \u00a0I still have not started any wheat (it will be the last thing we add once everything else gets sorted out). \u00a0He has been on and off dairy a total of 4 times now (cheese, yogurt, butter and things cooked with milk, no drinking milk yet) and has gotten terrible diarrhea each time. \u00a0I’ve also removed corn from his diet at he suggestion of a friend (who has a lot of family food allergies) after he developed a bad case of eczema on his neck that we couldn’t get cleared up (and wouldn’t you know, a few day off the corn and it’s nearly gone).<\/p>\n

\"wpid-imag0804.jpg\"<\/a>So this leaves me in a shopping dilema: no wheat, no dairy, no corn, no nuts (and no shellfish but that’s the easy one!). \u00a0I ran into my local Neighborhood Market (Walmarts’s grocery store chain) to pick up milk for the girls a few days ago and stopped by that baby food aisle to see what they had for Doodle. \u00a0NOTHING. \u00a0I’m not even exaggerating: they had nothing for babies that did not contain wheat, corn or milk. \u00a0Sure they had jars of baby food but I committed to finger foods only<\/a> 8 months ago and I’m not a big pouch fan (even when I gave them to Sugarplum as a baby when we traveled I had the screw on spoons, something about babies sucking their milk from a bottle and then sucking their food from a pouch…I could write a whole post about it…maybe someday!)<\/p>\n

It’s not a problem when we’re home. \u00a0I usually give him fresh fruit for breakfast and then some gluten (and now corn) free cereal to top him off. \u00a0Lunch he’ll get a veggie (either fresh or frozen) and whatever protein I have leftover for him in the fridge and maybe a few snap pea crisps or sweet potato chips after. \u00a0Dinner is much like lunch, veggie, meat (chicken, turkey, beef, whatever the family is having sauteed in a little EVOO).<\/p>\n

The problem is when we go out. \u00a0I can’t trust stuff to not be cooked in butter and I won’t give him fried stuff at restaurants that serve fried shrimp (just in case since hubby’s daddy is allergic). \u00a0So usually he ends up having baby puffs or dried fruit. \u00a0His favorite is freeze dried peas I buy at Target, but a boy only needs so many peas! \u00a0And the big problem right now is we are heading off on a 10 day visit to hubby’s family and there isn’t a lot of store variety right near by so I need to take some stuff with me.<\/p>\n

So after meeting a friend at a far away park yesterday morning, I decided to stop into faraway Whole Foods and stock up. \u00a0I can get quite a lot of stuff at my local Target or grocery store but I wanted more variety for him. \u00a0I don’t want him living on a diet of rice and oats and know that he needs more variety in his grains. \u00a0This is what I came home with ($33 later!):<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a><\/p>\n

The hardest part, though, was the veggies! \u00a0I could get him dried veggies like green beans (which the girls adore) or the veggie crisp varieties but he doesn’t have enough teeth to successfully chew them (he’s barely a 5 toother–two center bottom, three center top and those aren’t all the way in yet).<\/p>\n

I just feel so overwhelmed in this endeavor. \u00a0I’m sure it’s easier than I’m making it, I mean there are millions of people with allergies that navigate this problem every day! \u00a0But he’s still very much a baby and that leaves my options much more limited. \u00a0Plus we aren’t millionaires and while I will spend what I need to in order to keep him strong and healthy, I will continue to try and save wherever I can and try the cheaper things first.<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a>Luckily he’s not too picky. \u00a0He happily ate his buckwheat and hemp flakes after devouring his clementine this morning (though to me it looked and tasted like I just shredded the cardboard box up for him!) \u00a0Lunch will be the rest of the frozen green beans he’s been working on all week and maybe a scrambled egg. \u00a0Dinner, who knows…I’ll figure that out for everyone later!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Doodle is 14 months old today and by this point, both girls were eating anything and everything (the only exceptions were nuts and shellfish). \u00a0They were regularly having cow’s milk in a cup (though both were still nursing) and eating whatever the family had for dinner. Doodle, though is still on a pretty restricted diet. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-baby-business","category-family-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5290"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5298,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5290\/revisions\/5298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}