The Gastro Trip

Back in January we made our first visit to the pediatric gastroenterologist at MN Gastro. Kara was almost 8 months old.


It is important to note that prior to Kara's two failed attempts with rice cereal, one failed attempt with oat cereal, and a few times of trying (wheat) biter biscuits, she only ever had breast milk. She was a growing, thriving, chunky baby.


We went through Kara's health history with the gastro doctor, explaining in great detail why we were there and exactly how her reactions went. He told us that she "does not have FPIES. FPIES babies are failing to thrive, Kara is not failing to thrive."


I explained that Kara has been exclusively breast fed other than the three failed food attempts and obviously I wasn't going to keep feeding her food when she pretty much goes into shock each time she's had food! He didn't seem to listen too much to that, he just stressed that she was 8 months old and needed to start eating. I needed to stop nursing her so much and force her to start eating fruits and vegetables even though my poor baby would just scream in her high chair when we'd attempt to feed her. She was extremely delayed in her eating habits, but I didn't blame her one bit. The doctor ran some allergy tests - rice and oat along with peanut, dairy and a few other common allergy foods. We left that appointment with instructions to get her to eat, try her on barley and/or wheat cereal and to return to see him at one year. Needless to say, we left discouraged but our conversation on the way home went something like this. "Well, he said she doesn't have FPIES, and he's the professional. That's a good thing, I guess." We were left with nothing.

A few days later her allergy labs were back. Negative for rice, negative for oat. A possible dairy and peanut allergy but that could mean nothing too. Retest at one year old. Now what?