Tucker passed his food challenge today with flying colors, and had his first glass of real cow's milk, his first taste of cheese, and lots of real yogurt. I don't think he realizes how exciting this is, but I certainly do.
Apparently the biggest reason that food challenges fail is that they can't get the kid to eat the food in question. So you have to bring them into the allergy clinic HUNGRY to make sure they'll eat whatever unfamiliar food you need them to try.
Tucker's appointment was at 8:30 am, so it was do-able to just bundle him off into the car and tell him he was going to eat breakfast with the doctor. It became harder when the doctor was running late and the challenge didn't start till 9:40 am, with one tiny cup (about a spoonful) of yogurt. Tucker wolfed down that spoonful and just broke into hysterics when he couldn't have more. The deal is you need to wait about 10-20 minutes to make sure there isn't a horrible reaction, before you can really challenge him with a serving or more of the food in question.
It is really sad to see your son begging for the milk and yogurt he sees in front of him, but not be able to give any. (I did end up pulling out cheerios to keep us sane, but still it was not a experience to repeat--next time I'm going to be looser about eating beforehand because he did not need to be that hungry.)
I thought Tucker might have an aversion to the taste of cow's milk after only having rice milk and soy milk his whole life. Not so. He hasn't remarked at all that suddenly his milk is different. And he definitely had no qualms about the yogurt whatsoever. He even liked the cheese I gave him at lunch.
Next up is an egg challenge in November. He'll like that one: real french toast (with syrup!). If all goes well we may have a relatively allergy-free holiday season (of course nuts and seeds are off limits to us, but that is easy to work around).
