Egg Allergy

My children come from a family with very few allergies to food. Skin is a whole different story, but foods are generally a-ok in our world.

Benjamin has eaten everything under the sun (well, until he shunned food from 13-months until present). He's a peanut butter addict. He's tried everything that causes common allergies in kids and has never shown a single reaction.

Claire appeared to be following in his footsteps until about two weeks ago. She's had whole peanuts (!) that her brother stuck in her mouth. I fished them out, but the remnants were still there. Her bottles are washed in the same sink as peanut butter infested spoons and knives. The oil is on everything! I've concluded that if she has even a mild reaction to peanuts, it won't be severe. 

At her 9-month pediatrician appointment, the doctor encouraged us to give her peanut butter and all known allergens in small bits to help her body tolerate any foods she might later struggle to manage. He encouraged just about everything. It's interesting how different the doctors in one practice can be. Since we see just about all the doctors, they all provide different advice.

I decided to give her egg. It had nothing to do with what the doctor said and all because we happened to have some leftover eggs in the fridge that I wanted to use. Egg is soft, chewy, full of protein and something she can feed herself with little choking hazard. At her age, Benjamin was eating eggs often and loved them. Let's not talk about what he eats now... eggs aren't on the {very small} list.

Over the last month, I gave her scrambled eggs three times. The first two times, no reaction. She liked the eggs and they were easy to chew with her four teeth. The third time was an entirely different experience. This time, within two hours of eating the eggs from the exact same batch as the first two, she vomited profusely four times within a 45-minute period. And then done. No more reaction or lingering sickness. The egg was cleared from her system. I figured she had a reaction to whole egg, but could still eat eggs in baked goods as I'd assumed she'd eaten in pancakes and other muffins.

We went on a playdate last Friday morning and they had freshly baked pumpkin muffins. I gave Claire the equivalent of a teaspoon total of the muffin. She was fine and then two hours later, vomit everywhere. She vomited 3 different times over the course of the hour and had about the same reaction she did when I gave her scrambled egg the last time.

I thought she'd had a bunch of baked goods by now, and she has. Baked breads, croissants and pancakes I thought were made with egg. It turns out, none of those baked items she's eaten actually contained egg! These two times may be a fluke, but I'm not willing to risk it right now, having watched my daughter profusely vomit all over me many, many times over the last two weeks.

I've had two friends recently deal with some serious food allergy situations and Claire happened to also be dealing with her own (more minor) allergy over here. We thought we could slide under the radar on these food allergies because we don't have any ourselves, but nope.

Additional random tidbit: Claire has the Photic sneeze reflex just like me! It's hereditary and common among only 18-35% of the population. We learned about it through a Veggie Tales song Benjamin was watching on YouTube. Funny.