(Meet Shoshana)
Dietitian, Lactation Counselor & Food Allergy Warrior
Shoshana Ehrenreich, RDN, CLC
The entire Free to Feed team couldn’t be more excited to work alongside Shoshana Ehrenreich in our journey helping families find their freedom to feed!
As a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN) and Certified Lactation Counselor (CLC), she brings specialized support to your family as you navigate food reactivity, pumping, health conditions that require specialized support, and dietary challenges.
Growing up, Shoshana was surrounded by food. Her grandparents owned a catering business so food was always plentiful and exciting; food is her love language. As the parent of a food-reactive infant, she understands just how hard it is to eliminate food (especially foods you LOVE) from your diet while also meeting your daily macro and micronutrient requirements. Imagine dealing with food reactivity when foods that caused you a reaction were never in short supply. Trust us, she gets you.
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Love of food was not the only thing Shoshana inherited from her family. Food-related medical conditions (Celiac Disease, Colon cancer, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, food allergies, Diabetes, and more) unfortunately run in her family. Shoshana herself lives with Celiac Disease. She knows, firsthand, how the foods you eat can affect your overall health. She understands how dietary intake can and must be tailored to manage a plethora of health conditions while still enjoying the foods that you could eat and love.
Stressed about calorie intake?
Stressed about elimination and reintroduction?
Need a better understanding on healthy eating?
We understand and we’ve got you covered!
As an individual who accidentally took a nutrition class because she thought it was a prerequisite for graduating, she quickly found that her time was not wasted. After just a few classes, she realized that she loved nutrition and changed her education goals to pursue a bachelor’s degree in nutrition!
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During her quest to embark on a Dietetic Internship, which is one of the requirements to becoming an RD, she landed a volunteer opportunity in her local WIC center where she also found a new passion….she became OBSESSED with breastfeeding. She even ran all of the World Breastfeeding Week events for the WIC office in 2019…as a volunteer! The journey continued on and she became a Certified Lactation Counselor.
During her internship, she focused on pediatric nutrition and expanded her areas of expertise to include food allergies, pediatric genetics, and nutrition education in low income community public schools.
After giving birth to her first child, she quickly realized that her infant was suffering from a tongue tie. She did have experience in this realm, after all, she is a Lactation Counselor! Her infant lost 10% of his body weight in his first 24 hours of life, and she was advised to supplement with formula. This was not what she wanted, so she started pumping. She spent 6 weeks trying to convince her provider that the tongue time was the problem. When they reassessed him and finally agreed he had a tongue tie, she was advised against revision because “the tie would only affect breastfeeding”. Today, she regrets following that advice and encourages moms to advocate for themselves and their child(ren) in the medical world. As a result of her son's unrevised tongue tie, she was unable to latch him and began to exclusively pump. Exclusive pumping was no walk in the park for Shoshana as she made barely enough milk per pump session to keep up with her little one's needs.
During her infant's 2nd week of life, he had severe constipation. She had to stick a thermometer in his rectum to stimulate him to stool. The plot thickened. Her infant suffered from occult blood in his stool, had difficulty sleeping, and would only stay calm when held. She put herself on an elimination diet and kept a diary of intake. She noticed an improvement in just 3 days!
Here is where Free To Feed comes in! She scheduled a consultation with Annie because she needed help with reintroduction of dairy. After that consultation, she executed the reintroduction ladder with no troubles. Today, she has a happy, healthy toddler with no food allergies.
After exclusively pumping (EP) for 5 months and combo feeding for another 2 months, she realized that she needed to stop pumping because her baby needed her more than her breast milk! Besides, EP on an elimination diet, while working, is NO JOKE (Thank you Dr. Taylor for helping her grant herself the permission she needed to provide formula).
Shoshana’s love of breastfeeding and nutrition and her personal experience with elimination diets (gluten and dairy) coupled with the help she received from Free To Feed makes her an excellent addition to our strong, mighty team of food allergy experts. She can’t wait to offer help, education, experience and empathy to others.
Her powerful education and experience include:
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BS in Nutrition and Dietetics (CUNY, Queens College)
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Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, Certified Dietitian Nutritionist
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Pediatric Dietitian
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Certified Lactation Counselor
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Pumping Expert
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Additional Areas of Expertise: Kosher and Gluten-Free diets/Celiac Disease
When you need specialized dietary support and you realize that starvation is NOT the answer there is an expert at Free To Feed who is in your corner and has personal experience to provide empathic and targeted dietary support. A consultation with Shoshana will not only inspire you on your personal journey — but help you feel nutritionally sound and healthy during your journey.
5 Fun Facts About Shoshana and her family:
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Shoshana and her family LOVE to roadtrip! She is a pro at trip planning (her family calls her “their own personal travel agent”) and packing food for extended road trips - finding Kosher, Gluten Free (and for a time Dairy Free) food on the road is no easy task!
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She loves experimenting in the kitchen. Give her a recipe and she WILL figure out how to tailor it to your dietary preferences and needs.
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She and her family love to be outdoors (except not in the cold…). Whether it’s the park blowing bubbles with her kiddo, the pool with family, a nature walk to see the trees and wildlife, or her vegetable garden for some quiet, unless it’s snowing, you can find them outdoors.
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Her two favorite foods are chocolate and macaroni and cheese (but not together…).
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Shoshana is a bookworm, she loves to read (although her current reading list mainly consists of “Bear Snores On” and “Little Blue Truck”). When she has free time after the little guy goes to bed, you can find her nose in a book.
What Shoshana wishes most parents understood about food allergy babies….
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“Food allergy babies are NORMAL BABIES, they just need a little extra love and support. Don’t let that allergy add too much extra stress to parenthood…it’s already stressful enough! We’ll help you get through it, and thrive, so the extra love and support your little gets is snuggles and story time, not cleaning up spit up and examining poop.”
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