Tag: mom

Teal Pumpkin Project – Supporting Kids with Food Allergies During Halloween

foodallergiesmom

I’ve had several people reach out to me asking about the Teal Pumpkin Project – either about what it is, or about how to support it. So let me address both!

The Teal Pumpkin Project was started as a way to show solidarity and support to those that live with food allergies – specifically during Halloween. Teal is the color for food allergies, so having a teal pumpkin outside your house is an indicator that you have non-food treats for trick-or-treaters! It can also be used to signify that your child HAS food allergies if you let them carry a teal pumpkin or bag. You can find out more information about the Teal Pumpkin Project here. On the website, you can even sign up to take the pledge and receive a free certificate that you can hang in your window to show that you have non-food treats for kids!

My girl with her teal pumpkin bucket!

Over the years, the idea of the teal pumpkins have become widely accepted and you can now find the teal plastic pumpkins just about anywhere! You can find them at Target here or at Walmart here. You can also find more decorative teal pumpkins if you search their websites! Target even has these awesome bags for kids with food allergies to carry as their trick-or-treat bags! One of my best friends picked them up for my daughter!

Adorable little Food Allergy bags! You can find these in “Bullseye’s Playground” at Target! (Commonly referred to as the dollar section.) These are just $1!

My husband and I are working a “Spooktacular Walk” in a neighboring town in a few weeks and decided that our table will be completely allergy-friendly. We are going to use a teal table cloth to cover our table, and will only be handing out non-candy items to the kids. It’s so important to be inclusive during the holidays – and Halloween is no exception. I can’t tell you how much it means to me when I see that someone has thought about Asa and other kids like her by including non-food items to keep her safe! One incident of cross-contamination could send her into anaphylactic shock, so the holidays can be scary and nerve wracking for those of us with food allergies. Anything you can do to help put parents like me at ease means more than you know!

Hopefully by now, I’ve convinced you to offer more than just candy for the trick-or-treaters who may come by your house. Now you may be wondering what the heck you should get instead of Snickers or Hersheys bars. Well, I’m here to help! Here are some ideas along with some links for easy purchasing if you’d like. 🤗

By no means does this list cover everything, but hopefully it will at least spark some ideas for you!

If you are bound and determined to still offer food treats, consider a few brands that are known for being allergy friendly with the Top 8 allergens. However, it’s important to remember that people can be allergic to things outside of those top 8, and it’s still incredibly important to read ingredients and do your research! Some ideas are:

  • Dum Dums suckers – Visit their website here for allergy info.
  • Enjoy Life brand candies – Visit their website here to see their options and allergy info! (You can now find these at some retail stores and grocery stores!)
  • Pez – Visit their website here for allergy information.
  • YumEarth candies – Visit their website here for allergy information. (Please note that their candy corn contains eggs but the rest of their products are free of the Top 8!!!)

I hope that this has helped some of you! And thanks for being inclusive for my kiddo and others like her! 😍

Advice for new food allergy parents!

foodallergiesmom

A couple weeks ago, I went to my social media platforms and asked for people to send me what their advice for new food allergy parents would be!

I had over a dozen people send me their advice. I wanted to make sure to share them all on the website as well because we got some really great ones! Which one resinates with you the most?

Food Allergy Education Resources

foodallergiesmom

May is Food Allergy Awareness Month and May 10-16 was Food Allergy Awareness Week. In honor of that, I worked hard over the last couple of months to create some food allergy education resources!

As a food allergy mom, I’ve seen the need for creative ways to explain food allergies to kids. So, I decided to create an educational activity book geared towards kids ages 3-8. It helps explain food allergies through interactive, printable pages that can be used at home or in school! 

If you have a child with food allergies and are looking for a way to educate other kids about those allergies, this if for you! If you are looking for a way to teach your child about food allergies so they can better support their friends, this is also for you!

The activity book is available through my Etsy shop here.

It’s only $5.50 and $1 of every activity book purchased will be donated to Food Allergy Research & Education to support food allergy research!

Each order contains a 6-page activity book that you can print as many times as you’d like once you have purchased it! I used the book with my kindergarten daughter and she loved it! It was great to teach her more about her sister’s allergies but also to teach her about other food allergies as well. I hope it’s as useful for some of you as it is for us!

The second thing I created is a food allergy coloring book just for kids with food allergies! It contains a page specific to each of the top 8 allergies. It covers the very basics of what it means to have a food allergy and gives them coloring pages to talk through it! It’s available to purchase from my Etsy shop here for only $3. 

These were truly a labor of love for me and I would be extremely grateful if you would consider using it with your own children! Every kid who knows about food allergies is a kid that can help keep my daughter safe! ❤️❤️

Super Simple Fried Ice Cream!

foodallergiesmom

Ever wanted friend ice cream but didn’t want to mess with actually having to deep-fry something? Well look no further! Here is a super easy 5 minute recipe! Added bonus – you can even make this vegan!

Ingredients:

  • Vanilla ice cream of your choosing (I used a vegan ice cream to keep it allergy friendly!)
  • Corn flakes (or you can substitute Frosted Flakes or Honey Nut Frosted Flakes)
  • Sugar
  • Margarine or butter (again, I used a vegan margarine to keep it allergy friendly)
  • Honey and/or chocolate syrup

Directions:

  • Scoop out your ice cream and put it in the freezer.
  • Add margarine, corn flakes, and a bit of sugar to a small pan and sauté the corn flakes for a few minutes. If you choose to use Frosted Flakes or Honey Nut Frosted Flakes (like I did here!) you can skip the extra sugar.
  • Lay the corn flakes onto a plate and gently roll your ice cream in the corn flake mixture. You can use your hands to add extra of the corn flake mixture into your ice cream.
  • Drizzle with honey (pictured), chocolate syrup, or any topping of your choice. You could also add whipped cream and a cherry if you want to get extra fancy. 😉

This super simple treat is so yummy! Enjoy!

Safe Alternative to Dyeing Easter Eggs

foodallergiesmom

If you’re like us and have an egg allergy in your house, you may be looking for safe alternatives to dyeing eggs for Easter.

We all know that you can buy plastic eggs for candy, but dyeing eggs was always half the fun when I was growing up. It was something I wanted to do with my kids too, and with my oldest, I didn’t think twice about it. Then my second daughter was diagnosed with an egg allergy and I began wondering what I could do with her to continue the tradition of dyeing eggs. This year I found two great alternatives!

First, I found these fun craft eggs at Target. These can’t be dyed, but they can be decorated with crayons and stickers! They even come with some stickers in the package. Best part, these can be found in their Bullseye spot for only $3!

Second, my husband found these DIY eggs at Walmart and these can be dyed! So cool! They look just like real eggs and can be dyed without having to worry about an egg allergy!

Hope these help you include your food allergy kiddos in the traditions that we’ve all enjoyed throughout the years! Happy dyeing!

*Please note that you can find a lot of things like this online for delivery as well so no need to leave your house during this time! Stay safe everyone!

The Anxiety Returns

foodallergiesmom

My son turned 6 months old about a week ago. He’s the final piece of the puzzle to our little family and has been such an amazing blessing! He’s rolling, laughing, and sleeping in his own crib in his own room. He’s growing up and it’s so fun to watch. Every milestone he hits makes me proud and emotional. But there’s one milestone that I’ve been secretly dreading…

I’m terrified of starting to try foods. Up until this point he’s been solely breastfed. As we begin to try solids, my nerves about food allergies start to rear their ugly heads.

We didn’t discover his big sister’s food allergies until she was almost a year old. (To see how we discovered her allergies, click here.) She had also been exclusively breastfed for the first 6 months and she had a hard time learning to eat solids at the beginning. She was a little behind physically for awhile which made eating harder for her. (We got PT for that and it was AMAZING! But that’s a different story…) Because of that, we didn’t introduce allergens super early on. I also had basically no understanding of food allergies at the time so I had no idea about the research about how introducing early can help prevent allergies.

This time, I’m a little more well-informed. There is a lot of research about the benefits to introducing top allergens like peanut and egg earlier rather than later. (For some great links and articles, check out this page of the Food Allergy Research and Education’s website.) When we took Ezra to his 6 month appointment this week, his doctor recommended that we try peanut butter soon.

On one hand, I’m thankful for a progressive doctor that is trying to watch out for him! On the other hand, I’m terrified. I know that we need to do it. And in some ways, I feel more prepared this time around, but I can’t shake the anxiety and fear that comes with it. I’ve wondered since I was pregnant if he would end up with food allergies just like his sister. I’ve wondered what it would be like to have to worry about BOTH of them daily. I’ve wondered what we would do if he ended up with different allergens than Asa and we had to change our lifestyles once again.

Food allergies are one of those things that you don’t really understand until you’re faced with them. As least, I know I didn’t. I knew about them, but only in a hypothetical way. I didn’t know the reality of them. And the reality is plagued with lots of fear, frustration, inconvenience, and sometimes even anger. You wonder why this is happening to your child. You deal with the fact that not many people will understand the daily struggles you face. You pray that one day your child with grow out of their allergies or that a cure will be found.

I will most definitely update after we begin to try foods with him, but in the meantime, please be praying for us as we face a fear!

Becoming a Food Allergy Mom

foodallergiesmom

On November 27, 2018, we found out that my 11-month-old daughter was allergic to dairy. I suspected she might be after two strange incidents. The first incident involved vomiting violently after eating a new baby puree. When I checked the ingredients of the tub of baby food, I saw that it had pineapple and milk – two things she had never had before. I wondered if that could be a cause but I quickly dismissed the thought and returned to life as normal. A month or so later while eating out at a restaurant, my daughter got ahold of a butter packet on the table. She chewed on it, busted it open, and made a mess. I didn’t think much of it – after all, my kids have done much worse before. But about 10 minuted later, I noticed that she had a swollen upper lip.

At first I thought she must have hit it when the packet exploded. Then my mom brain kicked in – what if this was the milk in the butter? Could she be having an allergic reaction? Again, I sort of dismissed my thought but her lip was only getting worse so we decided to be safe and head to urgent care.

The doctor said that it did, indeed, look like an allergic reaction. My head started spinning. There’s no way she’s allergic to milk, right? Not my kid. We made a follow up with our pediatrician who referred us to an allergist just in case. Two weeks before my daughter’s first birthday (you know… the one where they are start drinking whole cow’s milk…) we found out that she had a dairy allergy. What did this mean??? They ordered us an epipen, quickly taught us how to use it, gave us about 20 sheets of information about allergies, asked if we had any questions and sent us on our way. Did I have any questions? Um… yeah… about a thousand. I couldn’t even wrap my head around this food allergy. No one else in my family or my husband’s family had ever had a food allergy. I had no idea what it really meant. But boy, was I about to find out.

Within a couple months, our allergist had us try a few other foods – soy, egg, peanut. Soy didn’t produce an allergy. Thank God! One down! When my husband tried peanut butter one day while I was at work, he thought we had made it through that one as well. She was acting fine. But the moment I walked in the front door after work, I saw a tiny spot on her skin. We started checking her and the hives literally started spreading before our eyes. We called 911. I had to give the epipen. My daughter was crying hysterically. I was putting on a brave face but inside I was terrified. We went to the hospital to be monitored. Thankfully, the epipen worked and we were discharged within a few hours.

Another month went by and we introduced egg. This time, we were both home when we did it – we were scared to do it alone. Her reaction to the egg was scarier than anything we had ever experienced. She broke out in hives. BAD hives. So bad that they spread to every inch of her body. I called 911 to be safe. I wanted them to check her lungs. While on the phone with them, my daughter started wheezing. My husband and I looked at each other and knew that the epipen was needed. I once again slammed the needle into my daughter’s leg. She once again cried. We were once again terrified. We went to the hospital, as you always should after administering an epipen. But this time was worse.

The hives started spreading again. She was crying and lethargic. She was laying on me and not letting go. I was praying – literally. The doctor said they were going to have to do another round of epi. They went to place the order. I was filled with fear. Why wasn’t this working? Why was she so lethargic? Was she going to be ok? I prayed again – literally. Right before the doctor came back in the room, her hives started subsiding. She started acting more like herself. Thankfully, we escaped having to administer more medicine, but the fear remained.

My husband and I went home that day more scared than ever. It was the first time we had REALLY seen the potential danger of her food allergies. This was more than hives. This had effected her breathing, and that’s something you never want to see your child go through. From that moment on, we became more vigilant than ever. Throughout the past year, we’ve learned a ton. We still mess up. Food allergies are really difficult to navigate. And out of that, this blog/site was born. My goal is help provide support, educate others, and share some tips and tricks along the way! Like it or not, I’m a food allergies mom. I hope this will help some others out there like me!