Thursday, March 22, 2012

A week of wheat.

Lack of focus due to misted up mommy eyes
"Could it be?"

I've been saying this all week.  Is it possible?  Is he OK? 
Yes, he is. 

Several months ago, we went through a painstaking process trying to introduce milk to our son, which seemed so promising at first: one spoonful of yogurt a day for a week with no reaction, but when we gave him a little bowl of it, he erupted into a red-eyed sneezing fit that went on for a half hour until the ceterizine kicked in. So now, we're a little gun shy.

But based on some promising blood work, the allergist is encouraging us to try wheat, then soy, re-try milk in baked goods after that, and then do skin testing for nuts later.

So... this whole week I've been giving him little tiny bits of wheat. And (deep breath) he's ... uh, fine.  I can hardly believe it.

Friday, I made some wheat-based zucchini muffins of which he ate a few bites and moved along in his day as if nothing catasprophic was going on. 

There were blueberry pancakes on the weekend that he gobbled up ~ and the sky did not fall.  Whole wheat elbow noodles with tomato sauce and ground turkey: the world didn't come to an end. 


We went over to a friend's house for dinner this weekend, and he could actually eat what everyone else was eating, including pasta! (the host was amazing about letting me see the ingredients of everything)

And this morning, I gave him not one, but two little slices of baguette bought from a BAKERY (mind racing, worrying about nut and sesame and dairy and soy cross contamination, I mean who can tell with these things ... etc ad nauseum)
and he's: fine

After so much worry, planning, paranoia, fear, it's ingrained in my gut to avoid certain foods. Changing that feels so dangerously strange. I'm checking for spots on his torso, sores on his legs, welts on his face, watching for sneezing and red eyes and, and, and... nothing.

When you've been protecting your child for so long from something, it's hard to let that fear go. 

I suppose that's what we all have to do as parents, for everything.   Just like letting them go down the corkscrew slide at the playground for the first time all by themselves, it's something of a leap of faith that we've prepared them well enough to tackle the world.  

It's a mystery to me why an allergy would disappear, though I'm sure there's medical literature that might help explain it to me one day.  And there's no guarantee any or all of his other ones will.  But for right now, wheat (simple, wheat) is a bit of a miracle to me.   

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