12 Month Vaccinations Are HORRIBLE (for Mommy and Daddy)

I don't know why it was so hard to watch this time. Maybe because she completely trusts me as I lay her down on the table---knowing they are about to stick 4 needles in her cute little chubby legs. And really, does it have to be 4 shots this time?!?! I realized after it was over, and she wanted to get down to play again, and I was holding back tears, that this was maybe once again a "mommy issue" and not so much a Maggie one.

The good news is that her ears are CLEAR!!!! That's right people, no fluid at all! I'm just a little bit excited about this if you couldn't tell. She's been poking at her left ear for a couple weeks now and I was really starting to get concerned. Her last ear infection was in June so we are about to reach two months without an ear infection, or any illness at all. This is quite the feat for Miss Moo. She does have 2 molars coming in though--this may explain the ear poking. If her only response to getting two molars at once is ear poking though, I'll take it!

So, onto allergies. Well, to start we just finished our LAST can of Neocate. At least Neocate "Infant" formula. We have decided to just do rice milk until we know the status of her soy, then dairy reintroductions. If she is still allergic to dairy and soy we will start her on Neocate for children older than one year. Although we don't like the idea of her continuing on formula, especially elemental formula, Neocate 1 is much cheaper than Neocate Infant--it will be like a nice big bonus!

Our plan is to introduce soy first, then dairy. Remember it takes 2 weeks to work soy and dairy proteins out of your body, and usually 4 days to see any symptoms of the allergy(this would be diarrhea, stomach pains and then blood in her stools), so this isn't going to be a quick process. I assume it will take us a good month to make sure she has outgrown each of them. Of course if she appears to have outgrown the allergy (remember most children do around one year of age) then it won't be like she can eat all sorts of dairy and soy all of a sudden. We will slowly increase the amount she consumes, to make sure there aren't any negative reactions.

Dr. Ally went ahead and wrote an order for a RAST test. This is the allergy test completed with a blood sample. It will check for around 25 food allergies, and may give us a better understanding of her reactions to the egg yolk and strawberries that occurred recently. Zac and I are thinking we'll do the RAST test after we've completed the reintroduction of soy and dairy.

We'll keep everyone posted, and please send happy thoughts Maggie's way; that she doesn't have to experience any yucky allergy reactions, and that she gets to try a few new foods that she can enjoy!