I've often heard it said that first babies are usually not as active in utero as are their younger sibs, who have "more room" to move around, as their mom's womb is stretchier the second or third time around.  Well, in our case, all of our younger ones were much more placid in the womb than our firstborn was.  They didn't seem to care that they had plenty of room!  I think they had a much easier time because by then I knew better, and was rotating, substituting, and avoiding foods, to spare them from developing any allergies.  Nevertheless, I still managed to mess up with our third baby!

By the time our daughter was 21 months old, I was pregnant with our second baby, our eldest son.  Believe me, I had learned my lesson.  During my pregnancy with him, I did consume some dairy, wheat, eggs and even peanut (only until mid-pregnancy), but I was careful to not eat these most common allergens every day.  I would alternate putting cow's milk with putting rice or soy beverage on my cereal, or in foods like homemade muffins and waffles.  I drank goat's milk and ate goat cheese instead of having cow's milk and cheese.  Instead of always eating wheat bread, I would also eat spelt or rice/millet bread.  I ate more sparingly of corn and eggs than I had with my first baby.  And instead of peanut butter, I used almond butter from mid-pregnancy onward.  Overall, I consumed less daily protein and more fat than I had with my first baby;  I was basically lazier about keeping to the Bradley® diet.  I gained a lot more weight and was a lot less active than the first time around.

Consequently, I entered childbirth in a wimpy state!  My water bag was even wimpy.  Our daughter's water bag had been very strong (a sign of good nutrition!) and didn't break until I was dilated to 9cm;  our son's broke almost 4 weeks prematurely, and labor was induced the next day in hospital, after failing to begin naturally.  By the way, I no longer see this as a "failure" on my body's part... I believe my uterus "knew" that our son was not quite ready to be born yet!  Anyway, our son was more like the typical newborn than our daughter had been... even more so, because he was early.  He had little to no head control, and was not nearly as physically strong.  But he was also much less allergic than our daughter had been.  I soon found that any amount of dairy in my diet gave him a stuffy nose, and that wheat seemed to bother him as well.  But as long as I avoided those two foods, he was fine.  Just to be safe, I nursed him exclusively until he was about a year old, same as I had my daughter.  We also didn't give him any peanut foods until he was three years old.  By the time he was two, he could eat dairy foods and wheat with no trouble, and to this day, he has had no food or other allergies.

Our third baby was another matter.  This time I was more careful to keep to the Bradley plan, still rotating and substituting problem foods, of course.   At some point into the pregnancy, I developed an aversion to soy milk (probably a good thing), and switched to rice milk only on my cereal and in many of the baked goods I made (not a good thing!)  Would you believe, I managed to sensitize my unborn son to rice!  He didn't kick and thrash as my daughter had, and I didn't find out that he was allergic to rice until he was about six months old.   Even after he was born, I continued to prefer rice milk on my cereal, and, as I was a real cereal lover, often eating three bowls a day, I consumed a LOT of rice milk.  My poor little nursling soon developed itchy eczema in all of his skin creases.  He was pretty fussy, too, and seemed to have tummy trouble more often than not.  I eliminated all the usual suspects - like the dairy and wheat and soy I had been rotating through my diet - to no avail.  On the advice of a friend, herself a mom experienced with allergy, I went on a drastic elimination diet, consuming only rice and water for the first few days in an attempt to "cleanse" my and my baby's bodies from all the allergens.

In the US, rice is often thought to be a mild, nonirritating, even "hypoallergenic" food.  We give it to babies as their first solid food in the form of rice cereal, and to sick folks who are having digestive trouble.  I would never have dreamed of rice as being a potential dietary allergen.  But when I started eating only rice and water, my baby's symptoms persisted!  I thought maybe he was reacting to allergens that still hadn't worked their way out of my own system, so I continued to eat only rice and water for the next day or so.  I was getting really hungry, so I ate LOTS of rice - rice cakes, polished steamed rice, rice bread, rice cereal, rice milk, etc.  And my baby grew more and more miserable!  Finally it dawned on me - DUH!!  He was reacting to the rice!  I eliminated the rice and went back to a more varied diet.  And within a couple of weeks, our baby was looking and feeling much better:  his eczema was clearing up, he was a lot less fussy, and his tummy was more comfortable.  I avoided rice completely until he was about 18 months old.  I then gave him a little bit, and he not only liked it, but had no reaction to it.  He was also started on solids rather younger than his older sibs had been - at about 8 months - and he did fine.  He is now 4 years old and can eat most all foods, including peanut.  As with our daughter, dairy products still give him a stuffy nose, so we limit those.

Here are some informative sites on rice allergy, which is especially seen in countries where rice is a dietary staple:

Rice Allergy - abstract excellent, info-packed resource, technical wording
Rice Can Be an Allergen, Too discusses symptoms, related grains, alternatives.
Two excerpts from a very long page of food science research abstracts (scroll down to 46 and 47 to read the complete abstracts cited).  Interestingly, there seem to be a number of ways to produce hypoallergenic rice - not only by the controversial practice of genetic engineering, but through other approaches as well:
 

46

Rice protein: Nutrition, allergy, and functionality. N.S. HETTIARACHCHY and Min Qi. Department of Food Science, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72704

...Rice has historically been perceived as a source of hypoallergenic protein.  [Yet] A small amount of allergenic proteins (14-16 kDa) have been reported in rice proteins. For producing hypoallergenic rice protein, protease, selective isoelectric precipitation, and molecular-genetic approaches have been and are being developed to remove or to reduce the amount of allergenic protein in rice...  Hypoallergenic and high nutritional rice protein with improved functional properties could have potential use as basic ingredients in a variety of food products.

47

Clinical and in vitro evaluation of hypoallergenic rice in atopic dermatitis. Z. IKEZAWA(1), H. Osuna(1), M. Yamamoto(1), S. Onuma(1), K. Tsubaki(2), H. Sugiyama(2), S. Nakano(3) and M. Nakajo(3). (1)Dept. of Dermatology, Yokohama City Univ. School of Medicine Urafun Hospital, Yokohama, Minami-ku, Yokohama 232; (2)Allergen-Free Technology (AFT) Lab Inc, Tokyo 116; (3)Forica Foods Research Lab, Niigata 949-74, Japan

...Hypoallergenic rice (HR) has been developed... by enzymatic digestion with actinase, extensive washing with salt and water-treatment, and degassing under reduced pressure... [also] by enzymatic digestion with aspartic protease and by the alkali-treatment, respectively... Fine rice and Care rice are already in commercial production as a functional food.

Fine Rice - a hypoallergenic rice;  includes product photo and description (for a translation, try this Google search string:  fine rice shiseido).

If you or your baby show signs of suffering from allergy, either to foods or other substances, my heart goes out to you!  I have a pretty good idea of what you are going through.  ;-)  My best wishes to you as you hunt down and eliminate those allergens.  May you and baby find relief and have many restful nights, good digestion, and easy breathing!  Feel free to email me if you have any questions or just need support!