He’s Allergic to What??!

When our youngest {now 4} was two, he had what I assumed to be a reaction to peanut butter.  It was a very minimal reaction…just a small rash on his left cheek…I checked with our family doctor and she confirmed that the cheek rash looked like a food allergy.  Needless to say, I kept the little guy away from peanuts and peanut products after that.

Our doctor suggested trying to introduce peanuts/peanut butter again in about a year.  Once again, a small rash appeared on his cheeks the day after he had peanut butter.  Ever since then we have just assumed that he had a peanut allergy…albeit a very slight one.  My other two kiddos still ate peanut butter and he never reacted to the oils that I am sure he was exposed to. 

We never had his allergy confirmed by allergy testing…and I had not yet exposed him to any other nuts for fear that he would react to them.  A couple weeks ago I figured that it was about time to get a referral to an allergist…I wanted to find out the severity of his peanut allergy, and also see if he was allergic to any other nuts.

Our primary doctor recommended that he get a blood test to determine the severity of his peanut allergy before heading to an allergist.  Imagine my surprise when a nurse from our doctor’s office called me last week to inform me that the blood test showed no allergy to peanuts!  Instead, it showed that he had a very slight allergy to milk and eggs…what?!! 

Um, wow…this little guy eats yogurt for breakfast at least three days a week, he has a cheese stick for a snack almost daily, lunches and dinners at our house usually contain at least some cheese, I use some form of dairy and/or egg in most everything that I bake {butter, buttermilk, milk, eggs}…ds4 has never complained of stomach aches, never had an ear infection, never vomited after eating dairy. 

Needless to say, I was shocked by this information.  The nurse asked me to remove milk {and all milk products} and eggs from ds4’s diet for the next week, and then make a follow-up appointment with our doctor.  So this past week I have been working hard to remove all dairy and eggs from what I feed ds4…not such an easy task considering almost all of the meals that I regularly serve {breakfast, lunch, and dinner} contain at least a small amount of either dairy and/or egg.  We also celebrated ds4’s birthday this week…so I had to find a dairy-free and egg-free cake recipe so the little guy could have a piece of his own birthday cake :).   

When I first began researching dairy-free and egg-free recipes, my initial thought was extreme gratefulness that my son’s allergy to milk and eggs is very slight.  In my research I have read about children who have severe allergies to not only milk and eggs, but also nuts, wheat, shellfish, etc. 

It also made me aware of how much I use dairy in my cooking…not that I think dairy is bad, but too much of anything can’t be that good. 

So now I am on a mission to adjust my cooking and baking…a mission that is just beginning…and one I will most likely be writing about more on this blog.