What a week! Once more, I am tired. I somewhat by accident offered to throw a baby shower that is happening in 2 weeks. So I have been scrambling to get a third/final coat of paint on our built-ins so they can dry/cure in time, and WOOF. I'll do a post about the whole process once they are finished, but it has been a doozy. I have taken to painting late into the nights to make progress on them. Like, laaaate. Add to that Alice continuing to eat 2-3 times per night. I am a zombie. I just keep telling myself, "This is a phase." And it's ok. I'm tired now but I really won't be forever. At least she's recently started taking hypoallergenic formula. When we top her off before bed she usually only wakes up 2 times instead of 3.
The news from this week is that I took Alice to get allergy tested last Monday, the day she turned 8 months old. After we trialed her on peanuts she had a reaction (red mouth and chest, puffy goopy eyes, somewhat pale face, vomiting). Her primary physician said, "We don't take chances with peanut allergies. I'm referring her to an allergist."
Alice was a champ at the appointment! She loves being able to sit up on her own, so she was really pretty happy sitting in her own chair next to me, holding my hand and sucking on a toy car I found in her diaper bag while the test results developed on her back. After I described her reaction to peanut butter, the doctor felt pretty certain it was a definitive allergy, but decided to do a scratch test panel to make sure and to check for a few other allergies. I wish I had asked him to test for dairy and soy, but we had already discussed quite a few other allergies he would be testing for (tree nuts because they run in the family, egg because it tends to go hand-in-hand with peanut allergies, salmon because her face broke out in a rash after eating it, and a few other random ones). I honestly just assumed dairy and soy would be standard on the scratch test panel so I didn't bring them up. Of course, they didn't end up being on the panel, so I will probably continue to avoid them and bring them up at her follow-up appointment in a few months, because sure enough, our sweet baby Alice has a pretty bad peanut allergy. Bad enough that we have to carry an epi pen for her now. Thumbs down.
She also has an egg allergy, and an almond allergy that only barely qualifies as an allergy, so we're not worrying about that one much. (Probably on the level of my brother Tim's mild tree nut allergy.) The egg allergy is moderate, and the allergist is recommending we expose her to egg baked into things 5 times a week until she tolerates that well, and then moving up to french toast and then cooked egg. He feels very sure that with repeated exposure she will grow out of the egg allergy. But the peanut allergy is bad enough that he is recommending we keep her away from peanuts completely instead of attempting any type of exposure or immunotherapy. Jared and I will research that for ourselves and go back to the allergist if we decide we do want to look into some type of exposure therapy. He said he's willing to do it if we want, but it's not his recommendation based on recent research. He believes it would only be a temporary help and not make a difference in the long run.
The diciest information to me was when the allergist told me that if Alice were to have the same reaction she did last time (any reaction involving 2 or more symptoms), I should for sure administer the epi pen. And along with that, any time you use the epi pen you are supposed to call 911 to dispatch an ambulance. He confirmed all of this with me twice. This feels scary to me because I know how serious of a situation that is, and yet Jared didn't seem worked up at ALL about her reaction to the peanut butter when he gave her the taste. He didn't notice her face getting puffy until I came home 5 minutes later and was like, "Bro, stop. That doesn't look good." In fact, I had to be the one to push for and take her to her primary care physician AND the allergist because I knew that if they were to ask Jared what happened when she ate peanuts his response would be, "Eh, nothing." Sooooooo ya. Nervous that she could be having an anaphylactic reaction with Jared and he literally wouldn't notice. Also nervous she could be having one with me and my response would be, "Is this real? Jared would tell me this is nothing. Jared would not call 911 in this situation. But the allergist said I should." Jared and I are going to do a deep-dive on anaphylaxis using his doctor resources this week to try and get on the same page, because this is an area we REALLY need to be on the same page about. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to have taken a picture last time she had peanut butter so Jared and I could look at it together, and with the allergist, and discuss the severity of that situation. Because honestly in the moment it didn't feel like a big deal, but after talking to the allergist and reading up on anaphylaxis, seems like it probably was a big deal. Anywayyyy there is more learning and discussing to be done.
Kids that have any type of allergy are more susceptible to having multiple allergies, so I feel really grateful and have more peace of mind knowing we have an epi pen now. It is scary that we have to though. There is a family history of allergies (mostly seasonal) on my side of the family and also asthma, which is highly correlated with allergies, so this isn't completely out of left field. But peanut allergies don't run in either of our families so we were surprised and a little shaken up this past week. There's a small chance she'll grow out of it, so obviously that is the hope. But if not, we feel prepared to advocate for Alice and keep her safe.
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