Reuben’s Story
Reuben is such a happy and vibrant 1.5 year old who loves nothing more than playing with cars, saying hello to animals, watching Ms Rachel, dancing to music and taking trips out on his new blue trike! He also LOVES his food, however, sadly his introduction to food was far from plain sailing, in fact it was and continues to be quite a journey.
Reu was a breastfed baby and at 6 months old we began weaning him onto solids. We started slowly with veg purée, porridge and baby rice – he took to the new flavours and textures beautifully. All was going well until a few weeks in when Reuben started to be violently ill a few hours after he’d eaten, to the point where he would pass out. Frightening to say the least, we could fill pages of tales of A&E visits and incorrect advice – it was a stressful time. We trusted our parent instinct that was telling us that this was something more. Fast forward 3 months and we discovered through our own research and an appointment with a paediatric allergy professor in London, that Reuben has something called FPIES (Food Protein-Induced Enterocolitis Syndrome!) – in short a delayed food allergy reaction that is quite rare.
Reuben’s trigger foods are confirmed as anything that contains dairy, soy, rice or oats. We quickly discovered that at the time, there wasn’t a plant based milk that existed with sufficient nutrients, appropriate for his age. Enter Grow with Iris!!
Someone was definitely looking out for us when we spotted a Grow with Iris post on Instagram one day, it literally felt like a miracle and even more so when we got to taste a sample. It’s so soooo good!
Reuben guzzled it down so happily and enthusiastically, he’d had nothing like it before and it was an absolute hit. We are so excited for the upcoming launch.
Thanks to the Grow with Iris founders and of course Iris for inspiring them. Roll on launch day!
