The Peanut Kid

So I've been remiss on posting. Partly because I'm busy again balancing work and the baby, some days well, others less successfully. Plus it seems when I come off of an extended vacation, I have a really hard time getting back into the groove of things. These snow days aren't helping...though they have made hunkering down in the basement, cozy with the furnace repairing instruments a bearable task that sunny summer days don't lend themselves to. Anyway...

I started blogging in general, as an outlet for all the new early childhood information I was learning. I hoped someone somewhere would find what I said useful. Here too, I've hoped the same, though I haven't really had a "cause". At first, Stefan was "high needs" as coined by Dr. Sears, but that was a bit of a phase, and now that he sleeps so much better, and has a lot less anxiety with people besides me, it's no longer an issue. I hope what little I wrote may help someone still. But now I'm starting to have an actual cause, and I wish I didn't.

Food Allergies. Gah, HATE! Of the gambit of things a child could have problems with, this is pretty tame on the surface. My biggest challenge until recently has been how to locate a grocery store that carries coconut ice cream which isn't a frost bitten snow ball, if there IS any at all, since it costs so much in the first place. I whine about what I can't eat, but really, it isn't that bad taking my favorite food group out of my life for a year...actually I would have made it two, but it's become more complicated. In retrospect, one severe food allergy is easy, 2 a pain, but tolerable...we're up to 3...and all of them have a huge place in my diet. But this isn't about my diet for much longer.

Here, crawling/walking are now one of the kinks in the ease of managing food allergies. His favorite place to graze: that hidden area right under the kitchen cabinets...with potentially 60 years of crumbs worked into the crevice between the linoleum and baseboard. Though 2/3 of our family is allergen safe, my husband still enjoys his American cheese (is that even considered a REAL cheese:), and there can't be Mexican food without cheddar shreds, which opens the door for crumbs on the floor and cross contamination aplenty. Yes, I keep it all hyper clean, but there is always that chance I missed something and that is a constant thought I can't get rid of.

When nuts were added to the list, it was relearning what to be vigilant all over again. Easier to shop for and actually find safe food than dairy, nuts avoidance isn't that hard. It's just that they used to sit out in a bowl on the table without a second thought, maybe one would fall into the cushions and it was OK...and now- well I'll steal the sentiment of a blog post I read recently: Stefan would be safer next to a pit bull than a peanut.

He's been fed primarily breast milk these past 13 months and I'm finding that though I complained about how it limited my diet, at least I had piece of mind that he was safe when he ate. As we're getting more into solids, this whole thing seems to have ramped up a notch. If I made a mistake through breast milk, he developed a rash, sucky, but relatively easy to handle. If I make a mistake with what he puts in his mouth, we need strong medications and an ambulance. And this worry is without even entering the realm of what happens when he's under someone else's care, without me in shouting distance. Not approaching that area of angst until I need to.

So, I used to condemn the "Peanut Kid"...my class didn't have that many allergies when I was a child in school, actually. No peanut kids, but as I hear it, they are the ones that ruin PB&J at school for the rest of us (wink, wink). I always thought people were making too big of a deal of the whole thing. Now I feel the peanut kid's pain, and more, the pain of his parents, who can't watch over their baby's shoulder every second of their life and hope that that he doesn't share his friend's lunch, decide to experiment with the allergen one day, or eat something that a package didn't label the ingredients properly on. I mean cold cuts could have dairy...cold cuts?!? It has made shopping easy in one respect...I can't buy most of the stuff in the store. Produce I KNOW is safe. Most likely fish. But the rest...let's just say I have to do a lot of reading when I go shopping.

Daily management becomes easier as time goes on however where I'm going to lose my calm: Restaurants, Parties, and one day, school. We don't deal with them too much right now. And the few from the holiday season and subsequent eating out have given me a glimpse of the frustration to come.