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    Home » Parenting » Reintroduction

    Milk Ladder Adventures – Step 8 Milk Chocolate

    Published: Mar 1, 2018 · Modified: May 13, 2024 by Zoe Williams. 831 words. About 5 minutes to read this article.

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    My 4-year-old has multiple food allergies and we have been doing food challenges for over a year now.  Here’s the story so far.

    We’ve successfully reintroduced wheat, legumes (peas, beans and pulses) and eggs.  Woohoo!  This has opened up so many options and made life so much easier.

    We are currently working our way through the milk ladder.  We started back in May last year, made it up to Step 4 (scotch pancakes) and had a bit of a wobble and stalled for a bit.  We found that she was ok with small amounts of the food but too much would give her loose poos and tummy aches, bad enough to disrupt her sleep.  So we hung around there for a while, making sure to keep giving her foods from the first 4 steps regularly.  Luckily once you get to Step 4 there are quite a lot of options that open up.

    Now we’re moving on again and we’ve been working through Shepherd’s Pie, Lasagne and Pizza.  I’ve found these stages really difficult for a few reasons.  First of all, she’s not used to eating things with cheesy sauces and she hasn’t wanted to try lasagne or macaroni cheese.  And my 7-year-old does not like to try new foods so she’s not been happy either!  So, if I’m honest we haven’t really stuck to the milk ladder.  Shepherd’s pie was easy as we’ve been used to eating a dairy free version.  We’ve given her chicken kievs with cheese sauce in and that was fine.  I’ve always given her pizza with dairy free cheese on top, and she didn’t even notice when I switched to normal cheese!


    Plus, I’ve been really worried about it as it seems like such a large amount of dairy to give her – bearing in mind she used to react to dairy proteins in my breastmilk as a tiny baby!  It’s quite hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea that it’s ok to give her this food, after so long of having to be really strict and avoid it completely.  At the same time, I’m trying really hard not to make a big deal about these new foods because I don’t want her to be worried about it and start refusing to eat it.

    Along the way I also gave her normal crepe type pancakes by mistake, the type that are only cooked for 1-2 minutes on each side.  Thankfully she was completely fine, and as she really likes them, I’ve carried on giving them to her regularly.  I worked out that these contain more milk than a child’s portion of lasagne and are cooked for a shorter time, so now I feel confident that she’s ok with foods containing cooked milk.

    Anyway, all was well, just a few more grey hairs for mummy!  So the next step was Milk Chocolate (Step 8).  I gave her a small amount of chocolate buttons 2 days in a row, and all seemed fine.  I did notice a few spots come up around her mouth on the second day, but they weren’t hives, just tiny little spots.  Then on the evening of the second day she threw up, and carried on being sick all night.  The trouble is, I don’t know if this was a reaction or a bug, and the only way to know for sure is to try again in a week or two when she’s feeling better.  I’m really not thrilled about the thought of having to give my little girl something that could cause another night of vomiting!

    When I was given the milk ladder, I saw the 12 steps, with 2 weeks on each step and thought, oh great we can get through this in 6 months – but in reality it’s been such a slow process.  We have to wait for her to be free of all coughs, colds or any other kind of virus, and then make sure we have a day to start the next step where we’re not too busy so I can keep a close eye on her.  Obviously we’ve not wanted to do it around birthdays, Christmas, holidays and other special occasions either.  Then when we've had a suspected reaction we've had to wait 3 months before continuing.  In reality it's taken us 9 months to successfully complete 7 steps, with 5 more steps still to go.

    I feel frustrated that we’ve stalled again, but looking back we have worked very hard and made so much progress in the past year.  She is growing and developing well and has a balanced diet, so there is no rush to get to the end of the ladder.  Plenty of people live without eating dairy by choice, so it’s not essential, but each step of the ladder we can achieve is a bonus.  With patience and a positive attitude, we will get through this!

    Have you started the milk ladder with your little one?  What has your experience been?

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    Comments

    1. Andreea

      April 20, 2021 at 12:12 pm

      Hi!
      What alternatives can I offer? I have no doubt that my child would looooooove chocolate but he is way to young for it (15 months), so what can I give him instead.
      Thanks!

      Reply
      • Zoe

        April 21, 2021 at 4:47 pm

        You can download a free ebook with milk ladder alternatives here: Milk Ladder Cheat Sheet

        Reply
      • S Rowlings

        January 02, 2022 at 8:54 am

        Ripple Milk has a chocolate flavor it's dairy-free, also Enjoy life has rice milk chocolates. There is also a brand called No whey.

        Reply
        • Melony Deen

          May 12, 2024 at 7:50 pm

          The link to the cheat sheet are not working anymore please could they be updated so I can download? Many thanks

          Reply
          • Zoe Williams

            May 13, 2024 at 11:30 am

            Thanks for letting me know. I've updated the link in the post - you can download the cheat sheet here: https://ko-fi.com/s/7e11b2cf71

            Reply

    Trackbacks

    1. Milk Ladder: How to Reintroduce Milk to Your Child's Diet - My Allergy Kitchen says:
      April 7, 2022 at 11:14 am

      […] milk ladder in May 2017 when my daughter was 3.  For a long time, we thought that she was ok with cooked milk. Unfortunately, after a while we discovered that she was getting silent reflux.  So we took a […]

      Reply

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    Hello there! Welcome to My Allergy Kitchen! I love experimenting with alternative ingredients and coming up with allergy friendly recipes. I believe you shouldn't let allergies stop you from doing anything you want to do in life.
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