Oh Peanuts…. {Food Allergy Awareness Week Guest Post}

Today’s guest post is by Linzy who just found out her daughter is allergic to peanuts.

Oh peanuts…how I use to like you.

I try to follow the pediatrician’s rules. I had been firm on not introducing certain foods until it was time. But one random day my 17 month daughter accidentally got a hold of some peanut butter and swelled up like a balloon. It was fast and it was scary.

It took only seconds for her to react to the allergy test which confirmed that, yes, she is allergic to peanuts.

I immediately sprang into action an armed everyone who comes into contact with her with their very own epi pen. Her school classroom immediately became a peanut free place and so did our home as I trashed every peanut granola bar, trail mix, peanut butter jar and nuts that were in the pantry.

In the back of my mind I kept thinking…I can’t believe that she is allergic to peanuts. Peanut butter is such a staple in our house and is one of the food groups my hubby lives off of. But even more importantly, peanut butter is staple of childhood! She can’t make ants on a log, peanut butter sandwiches or even play dough out of peanut butter. I am so upset for her and she has no idea yet of what she is missing!

She was diagnosed recently so I am still learning how to deal with this. It is scary and peanuts are everywhere! The fear is actually harder to deal with than eliminating her contact with peanuts.

I worry about leaving her in the care of even her grandparents because no one watches your child like you do. What if she accidentally gets a hold of something and they don’t react fast enough to treat her? What if someone doesn’t know and gives her something to eat? What happens when she gets older and wants to go to a friend’s house to play?

She is too little to know what an allergy is much less what to stay away from. As a parent, I don’t want her to be the “bubble child” because she has an allergy. I do my best to be relaxed about it because I know she picks up on my emotions. I don’t want her to fear it. I just want to live with it and not in limitation of it.

It is a hard balance to let her taste new foods and develop her pallet. I do my best to not limit her from foods as I stand by with Benadryl and epi pen in hand. We are still learning just how allergic she is and have been observing that they oddest things do or don’t set her off.

At least I am lucky she is trooper with her allergies. The last time she swelled up I couldn’t get her to stop chasing grasshoppers long enough to get a good look at her and the Benadryl in her.

We are learning about a peanut allergy day by day but so far so good.

A peanut allergy is an emotional rollercoaster for mom and dad because you don’t want your child to be limited in any way. A food allergy is a scary thing. We are lucky to have a great team surrounding our daughter. Our family, her teachers and her pediatrician are our partners in this. We are all on the same page to protect her and this makes it easier.

Linzy Cotaya

Linzy Cotaya is the author of CrawfishTales.com which is a featured blog of NOLA Baby & Family Magazine and Baton Rouge Parents Magazine. Not a parenting expert by far, Crawfish Tales merely journals learning how to be a parent and hopefully doing a good job. Linzy is a resident of New Orleans, a wife and a mom to Baby Crawfish. By day she is a public relations pro. You can also find her as a contributing writer for PR Breakfast Club, an AdAge Top 150 Power Blog.

Some Days it’s Hard {Food Allery Awareness Week – Guest Post}

This post is by my good friend Mandy, @ThatMandyGrr on twitter. Her son is allergic to milk and this is her story.

You go home with this gorgeous 8lb 14 ounce 22.5 inch long strapping boy who loves to nurse. and he nurses and he nurses. your milk is in. It’s all good. except it isn’t. His diapers are phlegm and blood. He spits up if you sneeze while you are holding him 45 minutes after he nursed, heck he just spits up and spits up. he won’t let you bend him at the waist, he won’t lie on his tummy, and he drops from the 50^th% to the 5^th%. so you let him nurse more, and you mention it to the doctor. Each time you bring him in you mention it to the doctor who agrees maybe cutting milk out of your diet couldn’t hurt. and finally, when he’s four months old and has grown 4 inches and no pounds, you get a recommendation to see a pediatric gastroenterologist, who poo-poos you to your face, tells you it’s a supply issue (which it isn’t) and finally agrees to do stool tests while telling you it is not a milk protein allergy (which your gut has been telling you it is and which you’ve tried to eliminate from your diet.). So, you should be pretty darn happy when you get that call Monday saying it is a milk protein allergy because now you have something to work with… woohoo?

But, your guy is one of those rare ones who is sensitive to the milk protein used as a filler in pretty much everything. Your guy is one of the rare ones who is sensitive to the milk protein you absorb thru those fancy organic skin products. Your guy, you realize after his first birthday and too much research, is one of the rare ones who is allergic to the milk protein used in so very many of the vaccinations he’s been getting and, as he gets older and starts to talk, you realize, your guy is in pain, his whole life. Each time he rested his little head on your shoulder after another bad diaper and spit up session, not crying, he was in pain… “mama, my tummy hurt” he stoically tells you as little two year old boys tell their mamas these things… and your heart breaks a little.

But, you know what the problem is, you can do something about it, and so you do. you learn that vegan is not regulated and means nothing in the grand scheme of allergies so you ignore that whole concept. You reach for the rare food products listed as dairy free. You scan the shelves for the kosher parve mark. You learn that most margarine has dairy in it as does even the soy yogurt. You cook more and more and more from scratch. You time his vaccines so he has larger intervals to recover. You have it under control. Even his big sister gives people the 3^rd degree when they try to offer food “is there dairy in that? he can’t have dairy.” You have it under control and there are fewer days where he is ghostly pale except for the black bags under his sunken face because he or you accidentally ate dairy and his insides are being torn up. You have it under control…

Except when you don’t. Except when he watches, not complaining, not crying, just sticking his little bottom lip out, balling up his fists and stating, as stoically as a two year old can, “i not like that anyway” as all the other little kids at the party get to eat the food. Except when another week goes by and there is again nothing at services for him to eat and you decide to just leave instead of making him watch his big sister eat lunch while he can’t. And you turn down party invites because he is only two and it breaks your heart a bit watching him try not to care that he can’t have the same things all the other little ones can have.

Some days it’s hard… Making most of your meals from scratch as you think longingly about mac n cheese or pizza nights, having four restaurants you’d trust, actually and literally crying when big sister spills her cows milk on her little brother, reading every single label on every single anything (marshmallows… who’d have thought marshmallows), having your two year old ask at his diaper changes if it’s a good poo, watching your sweetheart of a boy turn into a grump who won’t eat for 2 or 3 days and you know he must have eaten something and you can’t do anything to make him not hurt. some days it’s hard…

… but then good close friends make an extra cake just for him. And you get that late night text from Walmart the night before a party asking which margarine and which soy milk are actually dairy free. And there is that extra serving of the red beans and rice or pasta salad made special for the two of you in the fridge. And you wonder at the time all these women go to so your boy won’t even notice that they did do anything special, all just so he’ll feel like every other two year old there… and it gets a little easier