Allergies

The word allergies is common in our house hold and family. Gluten allergy runs in the family, on both sides, and dairy and now nuts. We knew that Ella would inherit some allergies and so far she is following suite with mommy. I have 25 food allergies, most of which are dairy and legumes, so it was no surprise when we thought Ella might have a peanut allergy.

It all started before she was 1. I made stir fry with peanut oil, not even thinking that a babe under 1 should have stir fry with peanut oil. She ate some of it and smeared the sauce all over her face. Later that night, even after a bath, her face and hands where red. It was a warm day and we had been outside, so part of me wondered if it was the sunscreen. But she never reacted to sunscreen after that day so it must have been the peanut oil. So I held off as long as I could to introduce peanuts to her.

One day, soon after her second birthday, she got into her daddy's lunch bag and found a peanut butter power bar and ate half of it. We watched her very closely and decided we might as well take the steps to introduce peanuts to her. So we made peanut everything and tried to get her to eat it, she didn't seem to care for it and in my experience that means she might have a physical issue with the food. So we kept at it trying to get her to eat peanut butter. She finally started to eat plain peanut butter and her face turned red. Just red right around her mouth. At this time she also has eczema around her mouth from having so many colds and from us cleaning her nose. When she ate the peanut butter her eczema spread from around her mouth and up into her eyes. We tried one more test of peanut butter a few days later and the same thing happened again. So I called the doc and sure enough we got orders to see an allergist.

The allergist and his staff were very nice and understanding, they even played with Ella during her test and she did great! We did a scratch tests for peanuts and other common nuts. We talked about family history and other food reactions that I have and that she has and we came to the conclusion that she has a mild allergy to peanuts. This is good news, because it won't kill her if she has peanut oil french fries or sneaks another one of daddy's power bars. We are told to avoid all nuts till she is old enough to have a blood test done. Her body is still growing and she may grow in or out of this, it's hard to say. But now we know and it's good. She loves sunbutter, it's great. I made Muddy Buddies with it and she loves it. She also loves to dip her carrot sticks in her sunbutter. So I'm happy and she is healthy and happy.