The latest advance in Benadryl

I love when a new product comes out that REALLY meets your needs and makes you life easier. It seems like so often in life there are things out there that seem to be especially made to add work and irritation to your life. So, when something comes along that actually helps you, I get happy.

Have you seen this? Single-serving Benadryl spoons. LOVE it!!! (I am such a nerd.)

The leaky sticky bottle of Benadryl in a zip-lock bag in my "diaper" bag is a thing of the past. Now, I can toss a couple of these single-servings in my bag or purse and be prepared. I never did understand why the child-proof cap on the Benadryl couldn't do the job of keeping all the liquid in there, but oh well.

Thank you researcher or marketing genius who came up with this idea. THANK YOU!!!!

And if you'd like to read another homage to Benadryl, check out Rational Jenn's blog. Or to get tips on how to put together your "go" kit for a child with allergies (including, of course, Benadryl!) check out No Whey, Mama's post "Allergy Kits, or I'm not a doctor; Don't Sue Me"

First Day is Here

Today was Big Guy's first day of kindergarten!

Wow!

And no one cried! Hurrah. Well, I lied. His little brother cried because he knew he was going to daycare all day and that his brother was getting picked up BEFORE lunch -- curses, 2 1/2 hour kindergarten. Oh well. Life is not fair. Get used to it, even at age 3.

Here is Big Guy before we left for school.

And below is Big Guy in line at his new school. Look at those cute kids!

He had a good time. He even said he is EXCITED to go tomorrow. Hallelujah! I'll enjoy that while it lasts.

After school, I took him out for lunch where I got the call at Little Guy's school that he was throwing up. Aghhhhh! So, we hightailed it out of lunch and raced to daycare. Sure enough, he was breaking out in hives and threw up for a third time as we were trying to leave the class.

The cook tried to make something different for him ... an englifh muffin, tomato sauce and sausage pizza. When we got home Little Guy said the teacher gave him cow's milk ... but I don't entirely trust that statement. His teacher is very good and I think it is more likely that Little Guy saw her pouring milk from the "special pitcher" and thought it was cow's milk, but you never know!

Anyway, when we got home I gave him a dose of Benadryl, put some anti-itch cream on his hives and let him sleep it off.

I did call the daycare and said that I thought we should try a new approach ... find 5-6 meals that we KNOW are safe and rotate between those for Little Guy. I know the cook is trying his best, but it can be SO hard. We get reactions at home that are a mystery, so why make the poor cook -- who is trying to feed a hundred other kids -- try to decode food for my kid.

I also may have them give Little Guy juice for lunch for a while. It won't kill him. He drinks lots of soy milk at home. This way there is NO chance of someone accidentally giving him cow's milk (not that I'm saying that happened here).

So, Little Guy did get to come home after lunch like his brother, but certainly not under the best circumstances. These allergies, sometimes they really drive me nuts!!!!!! (Pun INTENDED!)

But, back to Big Guy, he ate his goldfish snack at school with no problems. He had a fun first day. Whew!

Eating Out

Up until our recent vacation, I was pretty easy going about eating out. I would look at the menu and find something that looked safe for the boys, such as a hamburger, and would ask them to make sure that they didn't put ANYTHING on the bun ... no butter, etc. I didn't necessarily get into all the details of all the foods they were allergic to.

But while on vacation, we stopped for lunch in Sausalito and looked at the kid's menu, which consisted of:

• Fish and Chips (nope, probable egg or cheese in the batter)
• Chicken fingers (nope, same reason as above)
• Pizza (umm, obvious NO)
• Spaghetti and marinara (okay, finally something they can eat)

We ordered the spaghetti for both of them. And MY FAULT, I didn't quiz the waiter about what they put in it. In my mind, you would only put noodles and tomato sauce in this dish. Plus at the same time, my husband is complaining that the beautiful outdoor seating overlooking the bay was too hot ... and then Big Guy was squinting and complaining, so I had to ask to be moved inside. Needless to say, I was occupied with lots of things at the time.

Okay, here comes the food. Little Guy takes one tiny bite, about 2 inches of noodles and sauce and within 3 minutes starts telling me his tongue hurts. SHIT!!!!! I quickly down my glass of wine and fish tacos. I don't give him anymore to eat and we wait. I ask the waiter if they put cheese in the kid's spaghetti, he insists that they don't ... just noodles, tomatoes and herbs.

A couple minutes later, Little Guy tells me he has to throw up. I scoop him up with the napkin and race off through the crowded restaurant to the Ladies room. We stand in front of the toilet ... nothing. "Do you need to throw up? Because this is the place to do it. I'll give you some medicine when we get back to our table." He tells me he wants the medicine and isn't going to be sick. Okay, I hope so.

Back to the table. On the way back, the nice hostess asks if everything is all right. I tell her he has a food allergy and I think the marinara might have made him sick. Another waiter is standing and also insists there is no cheese in that dish.

Little Guy sits nicely at the table and takes the benadryl. My husband says he'll take him out of the restaurant, just in case. I wait and wait and wait with Big Guy for the waiter and the bill. FINALLY, I get it and we leave.

Outside, there stands my husband in a wettish shirt, "he threw up on the way out of the restaurant. All over me and him, the wall and a lady walking in." Oh no! But it is, in a perverse way, funny too. I have the mental image of my husband holding his fingers over Little Guy's mouth (as he described later to me) and the puke spewing out. Luckily (1) my husband has a similar sense of humor to mine, (2) I know the boys' allergies aren't so severe that there could be breathing issues.

Then we look at Little Guy's legs and see some hives too. He definitely had an allergic reaction to the noodles. We give him some more benadryl and drive away.

To defend the restaurant, I didn't explain what Little Guy's allergies are (but I am not totally thrilled with the waiters' snooty attitude). I realized I need to be the person who starts out the conversation "my son has a lot of food allergies ... can you help me find something he can eat?"

We did that that same night at a restaurant in San Francisco and they were VERY helpful. There was nothing on their kids' menu that Little Guy could eat, so they grilled a piece of chicken for him and gave him some french fries and steamed veggies.

I guess I haven't been that particular and stringent about it in the past because I've been lucky and his reactions aren't life threatening, but I hate to see poor Little Guy feel bad, so I need to be better about it. And reading posts like this help me to know that I'm not alone out there.

Another Call

10 minutes ago ...

Ring Ring

Me: Hello

Little Guy's teacher: Hi. Little Guy grabbed another child's vanilla wafer today and just ate a bite. Do you want me to give him benadryl?

Me: (inward groan) Can you get a look at the ingredients first? They might just be all sugar. If you can't get the ingredients, go ahead and give him a dose ... lord knows he gets enough of it. But be forewarned he might barf.

Little Guy's teacher: I know he did before. I'm really sorry I don't know how he grabbed that cookie so quick.

Me: It's okay. He did the same thing to me the other day. He grabbed a piece of muenster cheese from his brother. I immediately yelled at him to spit it out. So, at most he swallowed a piece the size of a half a dime. But still, 10 minutes later he barfed.

Little Guy's teacher: Okay, I'll check the box and call you back.

5 minutes later .... Ring Ring

Little Guy's teacher: So far he is okay, but the cookies did have milk in it so I gave him the benadryl.

Me: Good. Hopefully he'll be okay. I'll be there soon.

Wish me luck!!!!!

Hot + Cold = Hives

Happy Belated Father's Day! I am grateful for my kids' father. He is great with them and they adore him.

Lately it has been VERY hot and humid here so while at Grandma and Grandpa's for Father's Day, we let the boys play in the blow-up kiddie pool.


A few minutes after Little Guy came out of the pool, while I was drying him off I noticed about 4 hives on his stomach. Of course, he was itching them. Great. This happened to Big Guy last summer. When they go from really hot to pretty cold, they break out in hives! In this case, it was just a couple, so no big deal. Didn't even have to pull out old reliable Benadryl. But jeez!!!

Well, you can see they had fun splashing around, hives or no hives. Just wanted to warn folks that those of us with sensitive kids might see this kind of reaction this summer.

Bad things come in threes

Ugh, Little Guy has had 3 allergic reactions to food in the last 5 days. Here's how it all went down:

Friday: he must have eaten a couple Doritos when our friends were over because next thing I know I look over and he is rubbing his eyes so hard I thought they might pop out! Next thing I know his whole left side of his face is swelling up. Give him a teaspoon of Children's Benadryl and hold a wet cloth to his eyes. After about 15 minutes he was feeling better, eating soy icecream and back to running around in the backyard.

Sunday: He eats a cinnamon crunch bagel at Panera and 4 bites later, he is scratching those eyes again! I asked to see the ingredient list and teaspoon of Benadryl and hold a wet cloth with eyes in it to his eyes. After a three hour power nap, he is fine.

Tuesday: Off he goes to day care. At 12 p.m. I get a call, "Little Guy threw up. Can you come and get him?" When I get there they are holding him and he is calm and relatively okay, but the hives came out right after I hung up with them -- on his face, wrists and stomach. They gave him a teaspoon of Benadryl and he was already better by the time I got there.

What could he have eaten???? I check with his teachers, it doesn't seem like he ate anything he shouldn't have. I checked the label on the bread (the same bread he has eaten many times there). It says in the label "may contain milk products" -- but there isn't a milk product listed it in the ingredients. I guess that was it. But as usual, it's a guessing game - a crap shoot.

Aghh! I took him home and he was fine. I called the allergist and she suggested I put him on a daily does of Claritin for a couple weeks to help "calm down his system." He is now more sensitive to any little allergen because all those histamines are coursing through his body. So things he can normally deal with are causing reactions. It makes it sorta scary to feed him!

But no calls so far from the day care. Thank goodness. I checked the menu carefully today, talked to the cook and told him (and the teacher) what Little Guy could and could not eat.

I saw this study on the Allergy Mom's blog and I agree that while the milk allergy is not "ruining our life," it does add to the daily stress of life. I am pretty used to it (in fact, yesterday the allergist told me I was handling it well and not freaking out) and luckily, don't have to deal with breathing issues, but once in a while I see a kid sit down and eat anything on the table and think, "WOW, that mom is sooo lucky!"

Can he eat a hamburger bun?

Little Guy started daycare this week with Big Guy. In addition to the fears that he will cry and wail and give me the deathgrip when I try to leave him there, I get to worry about if they will remember NOT to give him the cheese tortellini or the muffin at snack time.

I get to fax documents back and forth to the doctor that give them permission to stick him with the epi-pen if he eats the wrong thing and goes into anaphylaxic shock. And more documents that allow them to give him benadryl.

But I am lucky, one of the reasons we chose this center for Big Guy is how well they handle food allergies. They post a picture of him in the room with a list of his food allergies so if a new teacher comes in the room she can see immediatley what his issues are. The whole school is nut-free, so I don't have to worry about peanuts in anything. And they have special menu items for kids with food allergies or who are vegetarians. But still .... I worry.

The teacher even called me at lunch yesterday to ask, "Can he eat a hamburger bun?" I told her it should be fine, but I knew there was a teeny-tiny chance there was egg in the bun. But since 90 percent of the buns I've looked at in the past four years, don't have egg in them, I hoped it would be okay.

And really, these things can creep up at the weirdest times, when you think you have done everything right. Like when Karen's son had a reaction to a tiny bit of egg on his hands. So, if it can happen to the mom, it can happen at school when I am miles and miles away.

And my Little Guy, like Sarah's Katherine, will learn this is just part of who he is. But it is another thing to worry about. And I totally agree with Sarah when she says that caring for your child is a privilege, not a chore, but you have to admit it is one more thing to worry about.

But, really, look at that face? How could you NOT want to do whatever you need to to keep him safe.
And we all know, that every mom worries. And every mom has something to deal with with their kid. It might be lots of ear infections and having to get tubes in their ears. It might be a delay in speech. It might be a wicked temper. Everyone has something, right?

He Can’t Eat WHAT????

Boy, just when you start to feel comfortable and confident with the whole food allergy thing for your kids … you get the mystery reaction. (Frankly, I think that is a common occurrence for all parents, just insert a different issue for “food allergy” and I think most parents can relate.)

Here is what happened. We sailed through the holidays (from a food-allergy perspective, not from a “oh my God, I have a lot to do” perspective). Last night, we went over to my in-laws house for dinner and to visit with some out-of-town relatives. We were all enjoying ourselves when I look over and see Big Guy rubbing his eyes a lot while he is playing.

“Come over here, Big Guy. What’s with your eyes?” I asked. “I don’t know, but they really itch, Mommy,” he answered back. When he moved his hands away so I could see his eyes, I could see they were starting to get swollen, almost like he had hives underneath his lower lid. “What in the HELL is that????” I thought to myself. (No! I did not say that out loud to Big Guy.) We hightailed it into the kitchen to show Grandma J and she immediately grabbed the children’s benadryl from the cupboard. We talked him into talking a teaspoon and I cuddled with him in a dark bedroom. He kept saying the light hurt his eyes.

Immediately my mind is trying to figure out what in the world caused this reaction—dinner consisted of chicken, rice, and broccoli. He had a fig Newton after dinner and I let him have three teeny bites of a star sugar cookie my mother-in-law got from some other relatives. Was it the sugar cookie? When I gave it to him I knew there was a good chance there was butter in it, but he has been doing very good tolerating some dairy.

My husband came to check on us and asked what I fed him. When I told him I gave Big Guy a couple small bites of the star cookie, he pointed out that it could have had nuts in it.

Wow, that hadn’t occurred to me. TO ME! I am the ever-vigilant one with these food allergies. I am the one person in the WHOLE WORLD who tries to think of every possible “forbidden” thing that might be in a piece of food they want to eat. But, honestly, it had not entered my head that there might be nuts in these cut-out, tasted like butter/sugar cookies.

And at the same time, my mind is racing watching and listening to Big Guy to make sure his breathing has not been affected. And I am trying to remember where I left the epipen (in my purse, where it ALWAYS is) in case I need to use it. Luckily, his reaction to who-knows-what didn’t get any worse and the wonderful benadryl did the trick.

Overall, he is okay. But this kind of thing makes me crazy. I want to know what evil villain did this to my baby!!!! But, I probably won’t know for sure. That is one of the frustrating and scary things about food allergies.

So, for anyone out there is dealing with food allergies, actually for any parent: my one piece of advice, make sure you have children’s benadryl! And for those with food allergies, make sure you have the epipen. Thankfully I didn’t have to use it, but I was able to deal with the whole situation better because I knew that, if need be, I could use it and possibly save my child’s life.

Anyone else have a mystery reaction recently???