Meet Matthew

Matthew is a 16 month old boy who loves to eat and play. Matthew loves to nibble throughout the day and thoroughly enjoys his meals. He can be found in his chair eagerly awaiting food to be spooned into his mouth. He loves to close his eyes, opening his mouth as wide as possible and lean into whereever he thinks the spoon may be coming from. Matthew enjoys eating regular amounts of food at meals times with several small snacks inbetween meals. This cute loveable little boy can be found playing very energetically throughout the day. He is full of bounce and spunk and is a typical boy who loves to climb, make a mess and get into trouble. Inbetween all this fun time Matthew enjoys a nice two hour nap to refresh himself and be ready for more fun and eating. To learn more about Matthew and his loveable character you can talk to his parents, Rob and Stephanie, who have expressed their great joy and unbeief in this totally changed child and pray that this new child is here to stay.

Yes … we have a new Matthew and to say we are enjoying him is an extreme understatement.

When our milk trial failed we had to go back to Matthew’s old formula for about 3 weeks before we saw him return to “normal” with regards to his stools and rashes. After this settled we moved forward with a challenge on soy milk. Because soy "milk" is not as well fortified as homo milk we had to put him on soy formula. This posed it’s own problems as formulas are all made from corn syrup or corn syrup solids, or other types of sugars that are no-no’s for those with Frucoste Malabsorptions. There is one soy formula, Alsoy, that’s main ingredient is corn maltodextrin (dextrose) and so this is good for those with FM. It’s third ingredient is sucrose, which could still pose problems for those with FM if they are quite sensitive. With our options limited we decided we would have to give this a try. I found a unsweetened vitamin fortified soy milk (Natura) and did some calculating in order to mix the Alsoy formula with the Nutura to make it equivilent to homo milk and therefore further reduce Matthew’s sucrose intake. We would prefer his bottles be completely free of non-friendly FM sugar so that we can better focus on his foods, but for now this will have to do.

And it is doing. It took a bit, but what an amazing change. For the first couple weeks we seen Matthew react to the soy milk in the same manner as he did with the milk, but milder. We held his bottles at ½ new formula and ½ old formula for some time with the hopes his body would be able to settle and adjust. We were very discourage at one point but so thankful for not giving up too quickly for his body did settle and after three weeks we seen his symptoms all leave. Every now and then we get this little flare up on his face, but it being winter we can’t say for sure if it’s food related or weather related. While we were holding Matthew on ½ and ½ he began to nibble all day long. He would go into his food cupboard and bring us his cereals, Baby Mum-Mum’s, rice cakes, rice crackers, GF cookies, etc.

We decided to try decrease his formula intake again and this time it went much better (our last attempt was a diaster). We have brought him from 50oz a day to 30oz a day. He still drinking more then he should be for his age (20-24oz is more in line with his age) but we’re happy with this level right now. The combination of his change in formula and his decreased formula intake has been amazing and I think not a day goes by that we don’t comment on how different he is, how much we love this new kid(not that we didn’t love him before), how we can’t believe the change, etc.

The above already describes the new boy we have. He is eating about 10 times what he used to. I don’t know if it the amount a normal child his age would eat but either way it’s plenty for him. And now I must start being more deligent on making food for him. He still likes his plain dry rice and rice noodles, but when he’s eating this much he can’t survive on that. So all in all an exciting change in our house. It has been two weeks and we still realize it could be temporary, but he’s never done this well for this long before (especially considering he has a molar coming in right now too) and so we have reason to rejoice and we pray each day that this is the answer and this is all it has been all this time and he may continue to be happy, content, healthy and growing.



When Matthew figured out how to carry the stool we had to pack it away in the closet so that he could no longer get it and reach the things on the counter. But true Matthew style ... it didn't take him long to figure out another way to get what he wanted. Not only could he now reach things, this is easier to carry as it has a handle and it's even higher then the stool, so now he can also attempt to get up onto the counter. Yes, our dear boy is full of energy and has no fear.