I wasn't going to write it now because it's Christmas Eve; but I have a moment to type this.

Back story:

My wife and I are super old school when it comes to food. Organic as much as possible, processed very little. We spend a lot of time preparing meals. Our daughters pack home made meals to school.

Our kids were all breast fed until 12 months, no formula. We introduce foods at six months, thereabouts, with "real" food. No baby food. No cereal. We make our own baby formula from a wide assortment of vegetables and meats. Each soup has at least five different vegetables, and there are three different soups so about 15 different veggies a week.

We are also not shy introducing "dangerous" foods. Eggs, in particular, are one of our favorite foods and we introduce it at around six months. We "juice" (squash the fluids out) fillet mignon to give mix it into a squash purée as a starter food (for bioavailable iron, since we don't do cereal).

We're not "real" Americans so peanut butter is not a staple. But we'll introduce it early on. We're careful, but not shy.

My son:

My son has never had a dangerous reaction like anaphylaxis. He reacted to eggs early on, around 7 months. We noticed certain foods gave him hives and we'd avoid them.

When he turned 12 we wanted to introduce milk so my wife could stop breast feeding. He reacted poorly and the nurse in the phone suggested we take him to the hospital. Therefore we did a test and he's allergic to everything.

Causes:

Who knows?

Maybe because he's a COVID baby.

Maybe its because my wife was super stressed while pregnant (we bought a house, moved, and figured out two day cares in the span of three months).

Maybe because of a very stressful "vacation" when he was six months.

Maybe its our city's industrial history.

Maybe its genetic.

Maybe its the luck of the draw.

Solution:

Deal with it, ultimately.

Luckily we are pretty food obsessed and we dont mind spending time/money cooking. So far we're:

Diary:

- Since my son is not allergic to breast milk, my wife will breastfeed for another year at a rate of about seven times a day. She's also pumping.

- We knew donkey's milk is similar to humans'. We tried it and he seems ok w/ it. Hard to find though. And pricey (with intl. shipping $100 for 2 L worth of powder)

- I researched bioavailability of calcium and found out that bok choi has a lot of bioavailable Ca.

Eggs:

- Not much you can do here. 25% of kids allergic to hens' eggs are not to ducks, but the odds aren't great. I figured that eggs of birds furthest away from chicken would cause less problems. Therefore I have found out a research paper that proposes that Emu eggs should be ok since they lack the proteins that cause allergies.

But where do you find emu eggs? There's a place in the US that grows emu and he's willing to sell us one to try out, but they wouldnt ship it and its a 10 hour drive.

Fermented foods:

My wife is Balkan and swears by yoghurt, I agree. We found coconut yoghurt without tree nuts.

General nutrition:

We're leaning heavily on fish and meats and making sure anything he eats doesn't bind to nutrients blocking their availability.

Result:

The pediatrician commented that: "he's growing pretty well for someone with so many allergies" so I guess thats a win.

On the other hand, this week we're bouncing in and out of the ER with respiratory distress - Dr. figures, given all his allergies, he has asthma.