Milk Allergy: No More?

My four year old loves ice cream. When he was about 9 months old,  I would supplement  breast milk with soy formula. We had no issues. Our pediatrician and even the nurses, residents, and doctors at the hospital when was born asked why I chose soy. I chose it because it worked for my daughter and we had no issues, so same for this little guy. I tried milk-based formula one time and never again. He cried so much that night. He could not lay on his tummy at all; that was how bad it was. With each of my children, at about 9 or 10 months old, their appetites picked up even more and I was not able to keep up. With my son, it was a little easier since I did not have to work outside of home. With my daughter, I would call my boss and let her know the deal. She eventually saw what was more important and took time to show me where I could pump milk at work.

All of that to say, at a  year old, I started introducing my son to cow’s milk. I hate milk. The most milk I have is in cereal a few times a month. His first couple of bottles of regular milk (2%) mixed with breast milk were okay. Then, one morning around 4:30 am, he woke up for a bottle and I made it half mama’s milk and half cow’s milk, and he drank a little of it and started playing. He was ready to settle down and wanted his bottle back. He finished it and stayed awake. He ended up crying hysterically and started to swell in his face and get hives all over his body. My husband was working night shift, so he came home (his office was like 3 minutes away, thankfully) and we all headed to the ER. I thought it may have been the milk but was not sure. The ER doc could not confirm, so they gave baby boy meds to clear the allergy symptoms and said to make a list of all he’d come in contact with and ate. We go home and eventually has another bottle and reacts immediately. We go back to the ER and I am like, it has to be the cow’s milk. We got meds and a couple of prescriptions plus an epi pen. A week later we had a blood test done, since he had no reaction to the skin test for milk, and confirmed it was the milk causing the allergic reaction. All of this happened in September of 2015.

The weirdest thing about it was I would buy M&M ice cream cones and he could eat them with no issues. He could not eat any other ice cream though. If milk was cooked as part of a recipe, he had no reaction. It was weird.

Fast forward to 2017, and he has outgrown his milk allergy. He will not drink milk, not even chocolate milk, but he loves ice cream. I try to tell him it’s all the same. He just does not believe me.