Sunday, November 8, 2009

No more PB for YOU!

(A reference to Seinfeld's Soup Nazi for those of you familiar with the show...)

At Ethan's last appointment, I asked his doctor what food we needed to avoid now that he was a big one year old boy. He gave us a green light for all of it (not choking hazards, of course), even honey, which I was a little surprised about, having heard that babies can't have honey until they're two because of potential bacteria. I even asked specifically about peanut butter, because not only is there conflicting information out there for nervous parents like us, but Brian and I practically live on the stuff! So Ethan got a tiny little bit on a cracker about a week ago - no problem, and a little bit more on his toast this morning.

Within two hours he was waking up very early from a nap bright red all over and scratching like mad. Poor little baby...He wasn't as fussy as I probably would be with my body reacting like that, but he was obviously uncomfortable.
(The picture doesn't really do it justice - he was red and bumpy all up and down his arms and all over his face! But as sympathetic as we were, we of course had to take pictures of the whole thing.)

So we took our first visit to Convenient Care with the boy. (I'm very aware that it won't be our last!) We are so lucky to live about 4 blocks away from our clinic, and they have great hours for stuff like this. We got right in and saw a doctor, who confirmed our suspicion that what we were seeing was probably a food allergy and it was probably the peanut butter. Ethan has been doped up on Prednisone and Benadryl ever since. And he's not either hyper or sleepy, as I would have expected with lots of meds in his system - he's just the same tough kid we're used to!

We even met Gramma and Grampa (and their very high maintenance dog) out at the park today for some fun. The swings weren't Ethan's favorite today, but being Up High Boy on Brian's shoulders was a hit.

1 comment:

Cynthia said...

Poor Ethan! I'm glad he's feeling better. And I am all for taking pictures of the worst moments--otherwise you'll forget them all before they get old enough to guilt-trip him with:)