My husband (Nathan) and I were blessed with three beautiful boys… Three boys who have two things in common: long eyelashes and food allergies. Sadly, our lives revolved around doctors appointments, allergy testing, weight checks, reading labels, learning new recipes, sleepless nights, cleaning up vomit and borderline mental breakdowns… for over five years.
Yes. All of our boys have had food allergies, as many children do, but they are unique in that all three of them have had a different list of food allergens AND they each had a different type of allergic reaction.
How could that be? Doesn’t an allergic reaction = rash-like hives, swelling and difficulty breathing?
That’s what my friends told me. That’s what the Internet told me. That’s even what the doctors told me. And that’s true, for most people. But it was only true for one of my kids. Each of their little bodies responded in a completely different way to their food allergens.
With each child we were perplexed. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent scouring the Internet trying to figure out what was wrong with my babies. I couldn’t find anything that made sense. It was like a giant jigsaw puzzle, pulling one symptom from one website and another symptom from another site, trying to complete the picture. But nothing fit.
After years of living and breathing food allergies, our boys are doing well and we finally have their symptoms (for the most part) under control. In our home we now do things the allergy way. It’s our new normal. But it was not easy getting here. In fact, it was the worst experience of my life, hands down.
Which is why I am writing this today. I want to take our journey and turn it into something beautiful, and reach other moms (parents) who may be struggling for answers. The mom who is constantly disregarded by the pediatrician because her baby is still gaining weight. The mom who keeps the journals and the charts and the notes, trying to find a pattern in her baby’s symptoms. Or the mom who sits on her bathroom floor at night sobbing into her hands and begging God to answer the question, “WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY CHILD?”
I have been there. You are not alone. And you WILL figure it out.
This is our food allergy journey…
The Allergy Way 