Tag: food allergy
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7 Food Allergy Safety Tips for Family
After my daughter was first diagnosed with food allergies, my husband and I grieved. But what we didn’t expect was that it would also greatly impact my parents emotionally. I think they cried and researched information as much as we were for the first few months. For all of us, it reactivated medical trauma we…
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I’m Not Sorry For Our Food Allergies
I remember the first time I ordered food for my son in a restaurant. First of all, I was terrified. Second of all, I was pretty new to the food allergy advocacy world. I was still trying to figure out what I even needed to ask for and I had not had a lot of…
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My Secret Fear as a Food Allergy Mom
“Lauren, worry comes with the territory.” I had heard this probably a thousand times before I became a parent. In my twenties, I worked with teens and their parents. Often times, the parents would say something to me along these lines in a light-hearted tone. It was almost as if they were saying, “You just…
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Food Allergy Parents Are Not Overreacting
“Katie, calm down. She didn’t eat any of it. It’s really not a big deal.” We were at a family gathering and my daughter had her own safe meal. However, my toddler, fast as lightning, reached over and grabbed food off of another child’s plate. I was concerned about possible cross-contact with her allergens based…
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Feeding Food Allergens to Siblings
“How are we supposed to do this?” I sobbed. I was sitting on our bed, venting to my husband while blowing my snotty nose. We had just started introducing peanut butter to our second child, which was one of our daughter’s food allergies, and my anxiety was racing a hundred miles per hour. How long…
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A Food Allergy Mom is Always On
What food will be there? Will they take the food allergies seriously? Does this have nuts in it? Wait, why is this label different than last time? Is the staff at kids camp trained on epis? Will this restaurant be able to accommodate us? Our neighbors invited us over for a BBQ, how can I…
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Food Allergy Grief is a Real Thing
Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o’re-fraught heart, and bids it break. – William Shakespeare Unlike the wise words of Shakespeare, I’m a master suppressor of emotions. I don’t usually use words to express my sorrow. Instead, I suffocate them. If anything feels uncomfortable, I bury it deep down inside…
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How to Call Companies About Food
I like to call companies in my spare time so that I can ask questions about how they manufacture their foods. Listening to the alluring voice of a robotic automated service makes my heart skip a beat. The adrenaline starts pumping as I type out a bunch of numbers in an attempt to reach a…
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10 Comments That Broke My Mom Heart
“Katie, be careful with your words. Words are kind of like toothpaste. Once it’s out, you just cannot put it back in.” When I was little, that verbal reminder usually came about because I was yelling at my brother for stealing and beheading my Barbie dolls. My mother would first listen, then pull me aside…
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Food Allergies and the Playground
When your child is diagnosed with food allergies, all of a sudden, regular, everyday things, like going to the playground, become something you wonder about. I had never noticed the amount of food at playgrounds until my children were diagnosed with food allergies and we started to venture out to public parks and playgrounds. One…