This was the scene when I left the house. My sweet little boy, fast asleep on Mama: 
The culprit? A tiny smidge of hummus Little Man had requested from Mama.
So now we're on the road to finding out what, exactly, Little Man is allergic to. We saw our pediatrician earlier this week, who said that from the pictures (thankfully I happened to have our camera with me) and how we described it, she figures he was "near anaphylaxis." She confirmed that we should have taken him to the ER instead of just dosing him with benadryl, washing him with cool water, and waiting it out (which is what we had done, per the on-call pedi's instructions). After impressing upon us how very serious his reaction was, she prescribed Little Man an epi pen and sent us home with a stack of information and a DVD that shows how to administer the epi pen.
Little Man's appointment with the allergist is next week, so Sylvia and I are combing back through our collective memory and assembling a list of all the foods Little Man has ever seemed to have a reaction to. Turns out-- as we found out when Peanut had her allergist appointment yesterday-- that they won't test for any foods the child hasn't already demonstrated an adverse reaction to. They tested Peanut for chickpeas and sesame because of Little Man's reaction to the hummus, but wouldn't test her for peanuts or anything else. We want to get the biggest bang for our blood-test buck, so we need to make sure the list for Little Man is as comprehensive as possible.
In the meantime, it's one foot in front of the other. Sylvia is still quite shaken by the events of that day, and my stoic nature is, I think, disconcerting to her. Add that to the fact that we're both processing a hefty dose of mommy guilt (her for having fed him the hummus and me for having had a carefree attitude regarding ingesting large amounts of potential allergens while pregnant and breastfeeding), and the result is two exhausted and emotional mommies.
Neither one of you should feel guilty about a thing. Kids eat hummus all the time. Sylvia should have zero guilt about offering her child a healthy yummy snack. And Christine, you should have zero guilt about what you ate. I ate peanut butter every single day of my pregnancy. And I ate shell fish while nursing. The science around allergies is always changing and updating. You really can't beat yourself up over something that may or may not have contributed to this.
ReplyDeleteThe kiddos have two great moms who are loving them well and are always going to be around to help them over come any challenges.
Hang in there((hugs))