The Food Allergy Puzzle

Lucia has certainly had a busy month. I want to be more diligent about reporting "Lucy News", and here's my first stab. We have quite the epic tale to report!

It all started after the YFE. You'll notice that my last blog was about the Youth & Family Encounter, and it was written about two months ago! For the record, I have another half-written blog floating around, but distractions have prevented me from finishing it. We have had such an upheaval around here over the past month that blogging has been a luxury I couldn't afford!

Anyway, after the YFE, we had my family in town and Lucia's first birthday party. After all that activity died down, Daddy and Lucy both came down with colds (I don't know how I escaped it since I'm usually the more vulnerable one...I'm crediting my new vitamins, which I'll have to blog about later). Lucia's cold was just a runny nose for a few days—she didn't even act very sick. But, at the end of her cold, she developed a cough. For me, that's pretty normal (a cough at the end of a cold), but apparently for babies, coughs are something to worry about. Providentially, we had a well-baby checkup the very next day. I told the doctor about the cough, she listened to Lucia's chest, and told me that Lucia had pneumonia! I certainly wasn't expecting that. The doctor prescribed a few days of antibiotics.

At the end of the round of antibiotics, Lucia was still coughing. I took her back in to the doctor's office and the nurse told me she was wheezing. We gave her a nebulizer treatment (noisy thing with a mask on the end that sends up a medicine vapor which is breathed into the lungs) there in the office. I won't go into how traumatic that was, but let me just say that there are humane ways to do this with a child, and strapping the mask on and letting them cry isn't exactly it. Anyway, after the "nebulization", the nurse listened to her lungs again and said she sounded great.

So we were sent home with the nebulizer (we are now the happy owners of that contraption) and told that she may have asthma. Another development at the doctors' office that day (during the nebulizer treatment while Lucia was crying) was that I remembered Lucia's bad reaction to peanuts a couple months before. I mentioned this to the nurse, who told me that food allergies and wheezing/asthma often go together. She recommended testing for food allergies.

We continued the nebulizer treatments for a few days but Lucia was still wheezing. I took her back to the doctor again and this time we were given a prescription for steroids. These made Lucia ravenously hungry and also very cranky. I think that lasted for about five days and then her lungs were certified as being clear.

We also had Lucia tested for food allergies. The test came back with very high allergy to eggs, high allergy to peanuts, moderate allergies to wheat and milk, and low allergies to corn and soy. Yikes! I cut all of these foods out of her diet and mine (since I am nursing her) for two weeks, until we saw the allergy specialist about her results.

The allergist was stunned that we actually cut all the foods out for two weeks! He said not to worry about the corn and soy allergies since they are so low. He said not to give her any eggs or nuts of any kind, and that I should not have any nuts either. As for wheat, he advised us to gradually introduce it back into her diet. And as for the milk, he advised us to schedule an appointment to give her milk there at the office (since she has never had it before) so that if she had a serious reaction, she could be treated there.

He also discussed the wheezing with us and gave us a treatment plan for asthma. We just have to wait and see how that develops...her next sickness will give us a clue as to how much of a problem it will be (since colds and flu are common triggers for asthma). We're standing by with the nebulizer! Side note: another risk factor is smog, and there's lots of that in this city. Darn you, Atlanta!

The interesting thing about parts of the doctor's advice is that some of it conflicts with my experience and better judgement. Take, for example, Lucia's sleeping habits. Prior to this food revelation, Lucia would usually only sleep on her own for 40 minutes at a time. You could set your watch by her! (Please note: this was not an issue at nighttime because she sleeps much better when someone is there next to her, and she sleeps in bed with us.) But once her system was cleared of those allergens, I found that Lucia was sleeping much better—and hour and a half to two hours at a time (just perfect for naps and that time between her bedtime and ours).

I mentioned this phenomenon to the doctor, and while he admitted that it was "intriguing," he also reminded me that he defines a food allergy as a measurable reaction occuring within ten to fifteen minutes after the food is eaten. He said that there may be food sensitivities, but didn't elaborate on that. I thought it was interesting that he dismissed the wheat and milk allergies so quickly when they showed up right there on the blood test. His reasoning was that in his experience, when moms and babies try to cut the allergens out of their diets, often their health suffers. I wish he would have had more faith in my dietary planning! I'm certainly willing to make sacrifices for my daughter's health.

I did, as an experiment, add a bit of wheat and milk back into my diet, and noticed Lucia's sleeping habits changed for the worse. The most dramatic change seemed to occur with the presence or absence of my morning glass of milk. How "intriguing!" Needless to say, I avoid those two foods now.

The time for Lucia's "open challenge" to milk approaches, and I begin to ask myself some questions as well: is it really advantageous to give her milk just to see if she has a bad reaction? I don't really want to give her milk anyway, given her sensitivity to it when I drink it. She doesn't have any dietary need for cow's milk right now since she's still drinking her mother's milk. Not to mention the fact that the testing itself would not be a pleasant experience: two hours in a bare exam room with no toys except what we bring with us, plus I'm not supposed to feed or nurse her from the time she wakes up until 10:45 a.m. A 14-month old can't understand these things. I came to the conclusion with Joel (tonight, actually) that we'd rather wait a bit longer until we would actually like to give her milk, and then re-evaluate. When she is two, we can re-test her for all the allergens, since many children grow out of their allergies by then.

So, for now, Lucia is sleeping better, I'm getting creative with my diet and hers, and we're eating healthier than ever over here. It's been fun to learn more about food and how to eat well so that our bodies are nourished well. Did I mention I've lost 10 pounds? That's been a nice side benefit! But, I'm not starving. I'm simply eating better. More on that in a later blog!