Mobility and Allergies

Since I've been on this trip down memory lane, today I'd like to detail what was perhaps the most difficult time since Sophie was diagnosed with food allergies. You might think that the first weeks or months were the hardest, and in some ways I suppose they were. However, Sophie was diagnosed at 3 months old and I think that things became most difficult when she was about 8 months old. Why after 5 months of adjustment time was I suddenly going crazy with worry over her food allergies? Because at about 8 months old, Sophie became mobile.

That's right, mobility is a problem with food allergies. Maybe not for every kid with food allergies, and maybe not in every food allergy family, but in ours, it was a problem. With 2 older siblings, who were still relatively little kids, sometimes food was dropped on the floor. And Sophie liked to eat it.

The severity of this problem really hit home to me one day when my husband called from work. It was about 10:00am. In response to his casual, "How's it going?" I burst into tears and said, "I just swept the kitchen floor for the 9th time!"

I realized that I needed to make some changes in order to emotionally survive this point in Sophie's life, so I stopped giving the other kids crackers and other unsafe foods, so that I didn't have to worry about crumbs as much. And of course Sophie began to understand her allergies as she got a little older and I stopped worrying so much.