All three of my kids could not tolerate any cow's milk in my diet. The pedi told me, w/ my 1st son who also got eczema when I had dairy, no solid food until 6months. Fortunately, I wasn't living near family and I had caller ID to ignore the phone calls b/c everyone thought I was starving the child to death by not giving solid food. The kid was gaining weight on his growth curve, was fat and chubby and healthy. Even after 2 healthy kids, my mom keeps telling me not to starve DD. Sigh.....family..gotta love them.

However, I had friends who had kids that were so ravenous, they were on solid foods at 8weeks....and I mean JARS of food at a sitting. I would just stare with mouth agape. I think if that's the case, just be mindful of the least allergenic foods.

I don't think this is true in all cases. My kids showed symptoms of food allergy from early infancy. They reacted to proteins that were passed into my breastmilk from foods that I ate. I think the jury is still out on the causes of food allergies.

As in anything, there are multiple causes. DH was telling me that peanut allergy is rare in some country (India?) and they feed the babies peanut containing foods from infancy. Cause or correlation?

I think there was a study that babies can be sensitized to peanuts in utero so if there is a family history, you should abstain from peanuts/nuts during pregnancy.

the immune system randomly rearranges gene segments to produce your repertoire of antigens you can respond to. My theory is that if you are exposed to an antigen when the immune system is naive, those immune cells are a larger proportion of the repertoire and therefore might increase allergy to that antigen. But if the food is given later, when the immune system has setup adequate tolerance measures in the gut, when those same antigenic foods are eaten, the immune system will not react to it as readily b/c those sells will be a significantly smaller proportion of the repertoire due to all the other antigens the child has been exposed to. Every time an antigen is encountered, the immune system expands the cells reactive to that antigen. Hence, allergic reactions get worse upon subsequent exposure b/c more cells are responding and responding more vehemently. the only explanation for kids who went into shock after eating nuts for the first time was that they were sensitized in utero. It has seen been shown that babies in utero can mount an immune response to vaccines given to the mother if given during pregnancy.

Julie:

If you are still following the discussion under your topic, I wanted to mention that we have had concerns about our DS that sound similar to yours, and I've been very concerned at times about AS, Defiance Disorder, and a couple of others.

If you have not already considered it, we found a therapy approach using floor play therapy, as outlined by Stanley Greenspan, et. al., in THE CHILD WITH SPECIAL NEEDS: ENCOURAGING INTELLECTUAL AND EMOTIONAL GROWTH to be effective. With a small amount of outside therapy I feel that we have opened the lines of emotional communication between us and DS quite dramatically, and thus laid the foundation for him to build up relationships with others. His capacity to handle varied and complex social situations has grown impressively in the past few months. If you're interested in hearing more, please send me a private message.

This video concerns autism. However the research is very interesting and underlines the importance of behavioral therapy. Hope you find it relevant:

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?cl=8763620