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This week is food allergy awareness week. And today I’m sharing our story of how we found out that my son had a tree nut allergy.
When Bear was 3 yrs old, Pip shared a butterfinger cookie with him. Little did we know that act of sharing would produce scary results.
Bear had only gotten about 1/2 of the cookie down when he began clearing his throat repeatedly. Thinking he needed something to wash the dry cookie down, I gave him some juice. But that didn’t help.
Then came the words
“My throat feels funny.”
I knew immediately what it was.
What’s interesting about this whole thing is that around his 2nd birthday, Bear just stopped eating peanut butter. He used to love pbj sandwiches and then just started flat out refusing them. It’s almost like his body knew that he shouldn’t eat it.
Since that scary day, we have avoided anything with peanuts or tree nuts in it, as well as foods that are labeled as being produced on the same machinery or in the same factory as them. We carry our epipen with us wherever we go. And we’ve since had a blood test that confirmed he has a cashew allergy.
I’ve found Chain Restaurant Allergy Guide to be a very good resource.
I’ve seen epipen inside tags several places and thought that they were a good idea. Here are some tags I made up for you to print and use on your purse or child’s backpack if you’d like. Right click on image and choose “save picture as”.
Find more resources on my Food Allergies Pinterest board.
Do your children have food sensitivities/allergies?
What are ways you handle them?
I really want to see epipens inside all schools. My kids do not (so far at least) have significant food sensitivities or allergies, but we have a friend with a severe peanut allergy, and family members with food sensitivities.
great idea putting tags on stuff to indicate where it is. We think Goblin might have asthma, its not serious at the moment but the doc has given him an inhaler and I've been thinking about how someone would find that if needed in an emergency, I might make up a tag too. Thanks for the idea.
I'm sharing this on the Sunday Parenting Party pinterest board