It was a few days before Christmas that we tried giving Kaitlyn her first bottle of formula. My wife didn't feel that Kaitlyn was getting enough milk from her so went with the formula to see how she would do with it. Being her first bottle, Kaitlyn had a bit of a time getting everything lined up and ready to be drank from. She covered herself in formula and then it happened. She had a serious reaction to the formula causing hives anywhere the milk had touched. She was crying and we knew we had to go to the emergency room. The drive over was pretty scary as we could tell that Kaitlyn was beginning to have a hard time breathing. The ER calmed down the situation and we learned from then on not to use milk based formula.

After a bit further of nursing, we tried Kaitlyn on soy formula. She responded well to this and has been on the bottle pretty much ever since. It was very apparent that Kaitlyn was allergic to milk.

We took her in for a full allergy test on Thursday to see exactly how severe her allergies may be. They did a test for 38 common allergies and she actually showed significant signs of being allergic to milk, eggs, peanuts and almonds. Even soy she showed a pretty high reaction to despite her drinking it everyday without noticeable issues. Now that she is getting older and is eating more of our normal dinners, we have needed to know exactly what she may be allergic to so this is very important information. Of course, grandparents and other family members need to know as well so they can help us keep those foods away from her.

We were told that allergy testing is only about 60% accurate so there is still hope that she is in fact not allergic to some of those items or maybe even that she will grow out of them as she grows older. We are dedicated to making her life as easy as possible with these allergies. I know that many of the best foods have these items in them so we are looking for alternatives. She has been eating pizza with us lately minus the cheese. Both restaurants we have been to have been very accommodating. Let's hope most of them are.