Our Scare

I'm embarrassed to write this post, but have to share our experience in the hope it could help others who deal with food allergies.

Yesterday the babe had the most severe allergic reaction I've witnessed. And it was my fault (even though this is not about "fault").

She is fine and back to normal, but I think it's going to take me a while to get over this.

I usually make Sunday brunch with pancakes being the main feature. Yesterday, pretty exhausted and distracted, I threw together my standard brunch. I always use banana as an egg replacement but had already used my last one in a pumpkin cake I had made earlier. So, I decided to use some of the babe's yogurt instead. But it wasn't the babe's yogurt, it my mine. I had recently bought a new brand of soy yogurt and a new brand of dairy yogurt and simply mixed them up.

The babe ate a huge meal and commented on how much she loved it (she even ate some of the leftover yogurt directly out of the container). After we cleaned up the maple syrup from around her mouth, I noticed some redness on her face. "What could that be from?" I wondered out loud. I quickly realized it was a rash with some hives developing. I gave her some Benadryl and watched the reaction get increasingly worse.

I won't go into too much detail, but if my husband hadn't been with us, I would have called 911. It got scary and the adrenaline was pumping. A call placed to our allergist was not picked up by the emergency answering service which caused me to fret even further. She ended up throwing up everything in her little body and started to improve after that. She had a warm shower and we snuggled in bed as her face and body began returning to normal.

It was a learning experience for both of us. Now we have seen what can happen and I have been reminded of how careful and vigilant I have to be. It has been some time since we've had a slip up, and this was the worst reaction yet, so I am counting my lucky stars that it wasn't worse and that my little fire cracker of a daughter is OK.

I am feeling overwhelmed by the responsibility of parenthood and have been reminded, yet again, just how precious our children are.

If anyone knows of a good pediatric allergist in the DC/MD/VA area, please pass along the information as we are going to leave our current practice. If you can't count of them in an emergency, what's the point?