Food Allergies

The Allergies in Our World

My son, D-man age 4, has food allergies. His list includes peanuts, tree nuts, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, fin fish, and cucumbers. We did not figure these out until D-man was about 2 years old. (Don't worry I'm good with the mom guilt about my mistakes leading up to his official diagnosis.)

When he was a baby/infant he always had eczema, so we started using the expensive soap and super gentle detergent...
When he was a toddler I thought he just had a sensitive stomach and vomited a lot...like whenever we went out to dinner/lunch and gave him something off our plates, instant vomiting. 
But then nearing his 2nd birthday, we tried peanut butter (we were excited PB&J is my 40 year old husband's still favorite food of choice). D-man had a rash, vomiting and voice changes (according to his allergist this was swelling at his vocal folds/throat). YIKES! we got Benadryl in him and watched him closely. His allergist indicated this was not the correct  course of action, we should have brought him to the local ER, oops, my bad. 

Once we got him tested, blood work and skin tests, the results came back positive for nuts and sesame seeds. We needed to keep a journal of any other issues with food or other allergies and that's how we got to the sunflower seeds (vomited up a sandwich I made out of sunflower spread at a children's museum while on a play date), fin fish (swelled up in the face when he placed a cooked filet next to his mouth at home), and cucumbers (kept puking every time he tried pickles). Also for a while we thought he was allergic to red food dye, this is not the case but we did eliminate it for about a 18 months of our lives. 

Adjusting our lives to these food allergies has not been simple, the first year was the worst. Now we have a better understanding of what sets D-man off and how to control our situation to make eating a fun experience instead of an experiment.