Figuring out Food Allergies...

As many of you may know, we have been battling the question of food allergies for the past few months. Drew started breaking out in hives all over his body in October of last year. We started tracing it to certain foods by Thanksgiving. We started seeing an allergist just before Christmas. It has taken us a while to figure out what is causing the hives...but, we finally have an answer. We have known for a few weeks that he has a milk protein allergy. However, he was still breaking out quite a bit. This was compounded by the fact that the boys in Drew's preschool all came down with Fifth's Disease this winter which comes with an intermittent rash. After thinking that he was allergic to just about everything, we started tracing it to corn after a head to toe breakout from eating Oreos (they don't have milk in them). We were able to stay off of the allergy medicines for one week so that we could do skin tests rather than blood tests (which Drew hates with a passion). Dr. McLaughlin did a full complement of skin tests with corn as the replacement for the milk (as we already knew that he was allergic to milk). We weren't able to do all of the skin tests at the first appointment in December because he had a rash that morning. Anyway, the moral of the story is...Drew is also allergic to corn. This is the first true corn allergy that she has ever seen. Apparently, corn allergies are a pretty rare thing. Eliminating both corn and milk from Drew's diet has been pretty challenging (we are also avoiding bananas and vanilla). We are slowly adding colors back in by way of Jello. However, sugar-free boxed Jello contains maltodextrin (a corn product). We just have to be very careful! Lucky for us, Drew will eat a variety of fruits and vegetables which has made this so much easier. I can't imagine trying to do this if he was a picky eater.