Food Challenge

Does the idea of bringing a young child to a hospital, telling her to eat a food she's never had before, and explaining it MIGHT make her sick sound fun to you? Wait, what if the kid is high-strung around doctors to begin with, and has had bad reactions to foods in the past? How about if she takes weeks or months to warm up to a new food? Yeah, and that she has to have six to eight ounces of it to see if she can manage it? If this sounds like an excellent way to spend a few hours, congratulations, you're a stronger person than me! Because the most challenging thing about Amelia's "food challenge" last week at Mt. Sinai was coming up with ways to make the experience as bearable as possible for her.

Let me back up for a moment. This summer, Amelia had her annual allergist appointment, where they did skin prick tests on her arm and *tried* to draw blood, but she got so upset they had to give up. So we did the bloodwork a few weeks later up near us, which went a lot better. The two tests showed that she had a good chance of being able to eat soy, so we decided to go ahead and do a "food challenge" (which is where a child, under the care of a doctor, eats a certain amount of a food and is observed for a reaction. No reaction? You have "passed" the challenge.)

Amelia was game about trying the chocolate soy drink (we'd built it up in the week before) but after one tiny sip she decided she didn't like it. Uh-oh. Much begging, cajoling, hectoring, bribing (Skittles), and gnashing of teeth ensued. We even mixed it in to her juice drink to hide the flavor. After, seriously, HOURS, she'd drunk about two ounces of the stuff, not the called-for six to eight. Sigh. Dr. Sicherer wasn't thrilled, but he was good-natured enough about it, and said that we should just continue to feed her small amounts of soy at home and watch for a reaction (such as eczema, or possibly, a flaring-up of her reflux).

So far we've tried to give her grilled cheese (with soy cheese, of course) and she took a teeny tiny scrape with her teeth. Not sure she even got any soy in that. Tonight Len's going to make a pizza. But I think I'm going to have to hide it in stuff, like pancakes or muffins, rather than get her to eat a brand-new food, which is always tricky.

Needless to say, the day sucked, but it's over and it appears she can start eating soy, at least in small amounts. She did pretty darn well for a four-year-old, actually -- considering her past bad experiences with doctors and with food.

Bring on the tofurky!