Girl Scout cookies, once again FTW!
Nov. 12th, 2010 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabineFor the first eight months of Emi's life, I was constantly apologizing to her. She has my skin. My dry, sensitive, itchy, dry, itchy skin. We would go back to the doctor for each well child visit and come away with a new recommendation for a tougher lotion. She was miserable, itching all the time, and things were not so good.
Then, miracle of miracles, we finally talked to someone at the clinic who had a suspicion that there might be more going on than just itchy skin. She got us a referral to a pediatric allergist. So that's why last April, Emi and I both completely cut out all milk, eggs, and peanuts from our diets. Emi reacted strongly to all three and I was still breastfeeding her, so we went through the kitchen and put away or threw out everything that would be a problem.
Since then, her skin has turned into baby skin. She doesn't have the red sores all around her mouth. She doesn't spend 95% of each day just itching. We've taken some other steps, but getting rid of the food she's allergic to really made a tremendous difference.
This is why I learned to cook vegan. It's really easy to add chicken, beef, or bacon to food. It's a lot harder to figure out how to cook the food that we're used to without any milk or egg products. Soy milk is pretty delicious and vegan cookbooks saved my sanity. Our families have been pretty good about it - I still tend to bring along food that I know Emi can have, since it's still occasionally hard to get through the concept that she just can't have ANY of that. No, NONE. At all. Ever.
Dr Ritter thinks she'll grow out of the milk, maybe grow out of the egg, but probably won't grow out of the peanut allergy. It's not so bad that we have an epi-pen in the diaper bag, but she immediately will get hives if dairy so much as touches her skin, let alone if she eats something contaminated.
So we read the labels on everything we buy at the store. Even the things that you would think would be safe sometimes use egg protein, whey, or peanut oil. Most manufacturers will put the allergens in bold, but they can ignore some of the by-products that will still hurt Emi.
So imagine my shock when the chocolate shortbread cookies I got from the Girl Scouts turned out today to be Emi-safe! Cookies! That she can have!
It's really hard to find good, high-calorie food for her. When we changed diets, she went from being in the 70% of height and weight to around 15%. That's a HUGE drop. She's so very active and the food she can have is all diet food - veggies, some crackers, fruit - that she burns off everything as soon as she eats it.
But now I have cookies that I didn't have to make. True, I was looking forward to them myself, but Emi's giggles are worth it. Besides, I have three other boxes of cookies, none of which are safe for her. So I think this will all work out pretty well.
Then, miracle of miracles, we finally talked to someone at the clinic who had a suspicion that there might be more going on than just itchy skin. She got us a referral to a pediatric allergist. So that's why last April, Emi and I both completely cut out all milk, eggs, and peanuts from our diets. Emi reacted strongly to all three and I was still breastfeeding her, so we went through the kitchen and put away or threw out everything that would be a problem.
Since then, her skin has turned into baby skin. She doesn't have the red sores all around her mouth. She doesn't spend 95% of each day just itching. We've taken some other steps, but getting rid of the food she's allergic to really made a tremendous difference.
This is why I learned to cook vegan. It's really easy to add chicken, beef, or bacon to food. It's a lot harder to figure out how to cook the food that we're used to without any milk or egg products. Soy milk is pretty delicious and vegan cookbooks saved my sanity. Our families have been pretty good about it - I still tend to bring along food that I know Emi can have, since it's still occasionally hard to get through the concept that she just can't have ANY of that. No, NONE. At all. Ever.
Dr Ritter thinks she'll grow out of the milk, maybe grow out of the egg, but probably won't grow out of the peanut allergy. It's not so bad that we have an epi-pen in the diaper bag, but she immediately will get hives if dairy so much as touches her skin, let alone if she eats something contaminated.
So we read the labels on everything we buy at the store. Even the things that you would think would be safe sometimes use egg protein, whey, or peanut oil. Most manufacturers will put the allergens in bold, but they can ignore some of the by-products that will still hurt Emi.
So imagine my shock when the chocolate shortbread cookies I got from the Girl Scouts turned out today to be Emi-safe! Cookies! That she can have!
It's really hard to find good, high-calorie food for her. When we changed diets, she went from being in the 70% of height and weight to around 15%. That's a HUGE drop. She's so very active and the food she can have is all diet food - veggies, some crackers, fruit - that she burns off everything as soon as she eats it.
But now I have cookies that I didn't have to make. True, I was looking forward to them myself, but Emi's giggles are worth it. Besides, I have three other boxes of cookies, none of which are safe for her. So I think this will all work out pretty well.
