When we realized she was no longer allergic, I realized the extent of our journey.
Summer of 2014 marks a new adventure for us! My daughter is no longer allergic to dairy, tomatoes, or corn!
Ever since she was 2 months old, we as a family, have been battling her eczema. There were long days & long nights of scratching, searching and wanting to understand why eczema was making our world crazy! We wanted her to be comfortable and NOT SCRATCH! I didn’t take a lot of pictures of her during her flare-ups, because it hurt to see her in such pain. Remembering those times is still challenging. Through testing, we learned that she was sensitive to many foods, while only being allergic (anaphylactic) to nuts. As a nursing mom, both of us had to stop eating her list of “no foods”. I had come to the resolve that I wanted her to understand that we are grateful for what we can have, even though we want some thing we can’t have. We must remember, everyone’s load is different; we must persevere with joy.
Our family did our best to show her foods she could eat, instead of focusing on what she couldn’t eat. I knew she was curious, yet she ate her food with pride. Sure there were moments, she wanted to be like other kids and eat ice cream & spaghetti and be ok. Those moments challenged me and made us stronger. I had to answer some hard questions, like “Why can’t I eat it, but she can?” On the flip side, I’m also VERY positive that she snuck a few cheese crackers on a few occasions and giggled about it afterwards. Then IT happened. After eating some cheese crackers at church (a story for another day), she told me about it and was not scratching. No redness, no eczema.
I gave her a few cheese crackers after this, with success. As a family, we decided to do a test of our own. Knowing she wasn’t anaphylactic to dairy, we took her out for her first taste of ice cream. I could feel the excitement as we raced to a local creamery. Between birthday parties and fun days at school, ice cream is THE thing to eat for a kid her age.
As we drove to the land of dairy, I thought of the countless times we enjoyed sorbet as an alternative. Now it was her chance to have her own ice cream. As she began to eat it, I was holding my breath, praying she didn’t break out or flare up. And she didn’t!! Although her face began to frown because she didn’t like it at all! Thankfully, not one reaction was seen that day or even days later.
I was curious if she’d outgrown other foods. Weeks later, we slowly incorporated other foods back into her diet, tomatoes, and citrus, there were NO REACTIONS! Relief, excitement, joy and a different peace settled in.
Our journey continues, as she’s still very allergic to nuts and sensitive to a few other foods. We’re hopeful that she’ll outgrow them all, but if not, we’re blessed.
Our journey continues, as she’s still very allergic to nuts and sensitive to a few other foods. No matter the outcome, I know we were blessed whether her condition got better or worse. Blessings are peace, hope & joy. Even during our hardest bouts with allergies & eczema, we’ve had to focus on what true blessings are.
1 Corinthians 13:7 “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Andrea, founder of ScratchMeNot, had shared about how she managed childcare in 2013 Someone Managed Eczema series here.
3 replies on “(ScratchMeNot) Mom E-votional : No longer Allergic!”
[…] full review of the book here. Andrea had shared on EczemaBlues.com (Meis’ blog) on Mom E-votional series: No Longer Allergic!, Someone Managed Eczema series: On Childcare and Mompreneur […]
This is such a good news for you n the family. We are so delightened to hwar this, hopefully she can eats more foods when her immune system built up.
We are still working hard to lo’s diet, lets hope she can eat normal meal with other children . (She is df, ef, wf, gf, nf, fruits free and other unknown.)
Hugs Pei and hopefully, yours will get to eat more food soon too! 🙂