Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Welcome to Too Blessed to be Stressed

Hello, welcome to my blog. I am a stay at home mom of three crazy, but wonderful children. This blog is designed to bring awareness to living with food allergies and our journey into homeschooling. Right now we are in the planning stages of homeschooling, so main focus of my blog will be food allergies.

Our journey with food allergies began when our four year old son J was diagnosed at 13 months old. J developed eczema (the weepy kind) when he was three months old. Our pediatrician told us that it could be caused by food allergies, but he would not be tested until he was a year old. We started J on baby food when he was 6 months old but he would not eat any type of baby food- he would not even try it. So since he was underweight at his 9 month appointment the doctor had us supplement his breastfeeding with formula. After J tried the formula he vomited and broke out in hives. At that point we realized he must have an allergy to milk. When he was tested we learned he was not only allergic to milk, but eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, dogs and mold.

Our two year old daughter Princess R was tested at 10 months, since we already had the family history. Princess R did not have eczema, but she did break out in a rash on her torso when she was 2 months old. Evidently she was sensitive to laundry detergent and the remedy was to put all her clothes through a second rinse cycle and hang her clothes up to dry. When Princess R was tested she was allergic to eggs, peanuts and tree nuts.

Our little guy Mr. T started getting weepy eczema at a month and a half. I went off milk for a week to see if it would help and put his clothes through a second rinse cycle and hung them up, but his eczema did not get any better. We went back to the pediatrician who prescribed Hydrocortisone and an antibiotic cream, but the eczema was still bad, so at 4 1/2 months he referred us to the allergist. Mr. T was diagnosed two weeks ago with allergies to milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts and soy. We were told that Mr. T needed to go off all those foods so he either needed to go on a hypoallergenic formula or I needed to go off all the foods he is allergic to. Right now I have opted to continue to nurse him and go off of everything.

Our family is used to dealing with food allergies and the adjustment while it can be difficult at times, is not as bad as I thought, because there are substitutes for milk and egg products, however most of the milk substitutes have soy in them. So I am researching foods without soy and trying to alter recipes to eliminate soy. I am hoping to post the recipes that I like on the website and also inform about products that I discover that do not contain the allergens that we have in our house.

No comments: