We cannot guarantee…

SO today I had a call back from the head of the primary school we expect Sidney will be going to.

I had a mini tour of it a few weeks back and it seemed very warm and jolly. We were shown round by some older kids who were pretty clued up when I asked if any pupils had food allergies; I also spoke to the SENCO (the Special Needs Co-Ordinator) at the time, and she said all the right things. As soon as I walked into Reception I clocked the tots playing with egg boxes and lentils (!) but she assured me that equipment and lessons would all be made safe.

Then the head rang me today, because I requested a quick chat with him before we apply in January, and the first thing he said was: “It’s about allergies, isn’t it? Well, I have to say we can’t guarantee anything.”

Living on the egg-dge

SORRY, sorry. Just trying to find a way to express how daring my day was. Because today I took Baby Two for scrambled eggs.

It’s been almost exactly a year since the last time we managed to get some scramble down her – last December, on my birthday, during one night away from Sidney when Sadie was still too small to be left with her grandparents overnight.

Since then it’s been playing at the back of my mind. Every few months some article or other pops up on my Twitter feed proclaiming that avoidance of certain foods could actually lead to the development of allergies.

Hello…

Dear readers, I do confess, it’s been seven months since my last posting… What can I say, other than a demented 18-month-old, a four-going-on-14-year-old and the paid work I can squeeze into the moments when they are both asleep (ha!) mean I have reluctantly neglected my station?

There’s been so much I’ve wanted to blog about, too. This has been the Year of the Allergy Mama on a Mission. Our grassroots campaign to fight Alpro’s decision to merge nut and soya milk production and slap a ‘may contain nuts’ warning on all their soya products resulted in victory when they backtracked and agreed to keep the lot, bar chilled yoghurts, free from cross contamination.

‘Do You Want My Family’s Business?’

SO, YESTERDAY WAS my debut into the (sorta) professional world of allergy. I was a guest speaker at a seminar for the catering industry on the upcoming changes to food labelling.

Despite my strong views on the subject, I wasn’t there to pontificate on the rights and wrongs of the new labelling legislation – I reckon that would only confuse the catering delegates even more, and I can tell you after yesterday that many of them are already confused enough about existing, never mind impending, allergy regulations.

I was invited as an ‘Allergy Mum’ by the organisers FATC to speak about the daily struggle to find safe places to eat, and food to buy, for my child.

So below is my presentation. It wasn’t slick, and my PowerPoint skills are rudimentary, but I hope it got some people thinking about the struggle we face to find allergy safe food. It is, as fellow speaker Michelle Berriedale-Johnson of Foods Matter succinctly put it, a “pain in the balls”.

Is she or isn’t she..?

SADIE-SOO is eight months old.

Aside from a panic at four weeks when she developed a horrid eczema-type rash across her face and neck (which disappeared three fraught weeks later, during which we were thinking ‘bloody brilliant, another allergy baby’) she has seemed, dare I say it, to be allergy free.

Weaning has gone well. We’ve introduced soya, dairy, banana and wheat and she’s stuffed the lot. No rashes, no hives.

& more to come

The rest is a long and boring story, but the upshot is this: we were sent home clutching a bottle of Benadryl, a prescription for two EpiPens, three pamphlets on nut-free, wheat-free and egg-free diets, a good deal of sensible advice from the doctor and dietician and now, nine months on, here we are.

We’ve added a few more to the list since then: sesame’s the latest, which, coupled with chickpea, means an end to my hummus obsession (well, it means having to brush my teeth, wash my hands and wipe down all surfaces after eating the stuff which, frankly, is too much of a faff. I’ll have cheese and pickle).

There’s also green pea, which developed out of the blue after he had spent an entire summer wolfing down peas with no ill effects, and – according to the last set of blood tests – most tree nuts, which means avoiding them all for now.

It’s surprising, though, how quickly you get used to it; it’s having to explain the complexities of what we can and can’t have to other people that’s the problem.

Even though I know very well that just a touch of the wrong food on his skin could trigger a severe reaction, I can’t help feeling like a fraud and a fusspot every time I go into my spiel about the dos and don’ts of what to eat during playdates with Sidney… or whip out my Milton’s sterilising wipes to give the highchair in the park caff a good rub down.

We’ve been lucky, so far, in that his reactions have only ever been skin related. Of course, in the back of our minds is always the worry that next time it could be worse. He reacted very swiftly and strongly to just a touch of both sesame and egg: an indicator, potentially, of a more dramatic effect if he ever actually ingested any.

On the plus side we know what to avoid and have all the medical gizmos and knowhow we need – fingers crossed – to tackle any reaction. That’s all manageable for now: he’s 14 months old and it’ll be a good while yet before I let him our of my sight for any length of time. Nursery isn’t happening, as far as I’m concerned, until he’s at least old enough to communicate how he feels. I simply can’t trust anyone else to keep an eagle eye on him in the same way that I, my husband or our closest family would.

The biggest thing, really, is trying to keep him safe from harm while never, ever wanting him to feel like the funny allergic kid.

Scrambled eggs on Mother’s Day

It was a perfectly innocuous Mother’s Day breakfast that booted us into a new way of life. And the morning had started so well: just a couple of night-time wake-ups and a respectable 7am start from our five month-old baby boy. Flowers (pink and yellow) delivered to the door. Cards. A cup of tea in bed. And scrambled eggs on toast.

Then, not long after, we noticed an odd rash developing on his little stick legs: white, bumpy, like nettle stings. Within minutes the lumps had spread to his throat and chin. My husband was quick to act: he carries an EpiPen for a ridiculous list of food intolerances that transform him into Elephant Man when combined with vigorous exercise. He recognised the hives straight away and, taking no chances, got on the phone to the out of hours doc.  They said: “Call an ambulance.”

So the rest of my first Mother’s Day was spent, memorably enough, languishing in a Hackney A&E. A syringe full of antihistamine saw off the lumps and bumps but we were baffled as to what had caused this reaction when he was still solely breastfed. Was it the flowers? Pollen in the early spring air? Something in his eczema creams? The paediatric team couldn’t say, really: just go straight back to the GP or A&E if it happens again.

Barely a month later it did, and this time the cause was blindingly obvious. I gave him his first taste of banana. Within minutes there were red splodges where the mash had touched his skin, and soon hives had spread across his face and neck. So, another dash to the doc for antihistamines and a request, now, for specialist referral.

We were due to go on holiday to Greece just a couple of weeks later and the wait to see an allergy specialist on the NHS would be at least three months, we were told. Panicked as to what might have caused it, and worried about whether the next reaction would be more serious, we booked to see an NHS consultant privately.

He asked us to run through exactly what had happened on the morning of the first reaction. We blathered on about pollen and flowers, skin creams, floor cleaners. He asked what we had eaten. Scrambled eggs, we said. ‘That’ll be it’, he said. He hadn’t even eaten any, we protested, stupidly.

But the results of a skin prick test confirmed it: our baby was quite definitely allergic to egg. Apparently even the tiniest trace on our hands, unwittingly transferred to his skin when we were applying his creams, would have been enough to trigger the hives.

Of course we weren’t surprised when banana threw up a positive (though who the hell had ever heard of banana allergy?). Possibly wheat and latex, too, though the results were borderline. And the trump card – peanuts. Crap.

What’s it all about?

I’m Mum to a fully paid-up food allergic, EpiPen-toting tot. Current tally: egg, wheat, nuts, sesame, chickpeas, green peas and, yep, banana. Arrrggh.

It’s early days and we’ve just started tiptoeing around this new, weird world of food allergy. Amazingly, while there are some great resources out there, there seems to be very little practical advice on day-to-day living with a food allergic child.

This blog is an attempt to share my experiences and findings about everything from allergy-friendly recipes, products and places to go to the latest news and research. We live in London so it’ll be from a London perspective but I’ll try to chuck in any other info I find.

One thing I promise is no handwringing here – it’s totally disorienting, of course, but the aim is not to let food allergy rule our lives.

P.S. In my other life I’m a former newspaper journalist turned freelance writer working from home (with baby underfoot).

Alexa Baracaia