The ants go marching one by one...

So it’s ant season in Montreal and it seems everyone I know has been dealing with an ant problem. Including myself. I was so happy to have made it to my 3rd summer in our house without a problem. My neighbour kept telling me… just wait, your turn will come, and it did last week. If you don’t know me, or if you don’t know me well I have OCD (undiagnosed by a medical professional, but diagnosed by everyone who does know me well). I don’t do well with untidiness, uncleanliness and BUGS!

I saw the first ant at about 8:45p.m, so we still had 15 minutes to make it to the store to buy ant traps and raid to cover the situation overnight until I called an exterminator in the morning. Well… it seems these little traps have peanut butter in them to attract the ants. The peanut butter is contained in the package, but of course I would not have them in the house. This begs the question, would it be possible that an ant gets some of the peanut butter, marches around with it, spits it out and somehow I touch, AND ingest it? Unlikely… but I just was not comfortable with the idea. We used a raid spray… way too much of it because we were practically suffocating from the artificial flowery smell in emitted. It did do the trick though. The following day the exterminator came and sprayed in and out. I spent a lot more than the $5 traps would have cost, but the ants are officially gone and my house is safe. (I did speak to the exterminator about the ingredients in his spray and whether it's safe in a house with a baby. O.K for both).

Note to allergic people- read labels on EVERYTHING because peanuts, peanut oil and peanut butter can be found in the strangest places.

Have a happy long weekend everyone!

:)

J.

The Allergic Mom-Redefined

I recently posted about the boy not having any allergies, however I was slightly premature in publicizing that statement. Two days before his actual birthday he was eating honeydew for the first time and immediately after he developed hives all over his legs. I gave him Benadryl (I highly recommend every parent keeps a bottle for situations like this). Aside from the hives he appeared to be fine, but I trusted my instincts and threw him in the car and off we went to the hospital. They took him in immediately, found that his breathing was compromised, so they hooked him up to wires and gave him meds and we stayed for a few hours until we got the all clear to go home. It could be the honeydew, but it could also be the strawberries he ate during dinner (even though it was his 6th day on strawberries). We will be seeing an allergist soon and hopefully we will figure out exactly what happened and whether this is in fact an allergy. I am just hoping that it was an isolated incident, and that I won’t have to start a new blog titled “The Allergic Boy”!

Since then, we have officially become a honeydew, strawberry and peanut free home. The ER doctor prescribed an Epipen which we carry everywhere we go and we were told to avoid strawberries and honeydew. I spoke with the daycare teacher at length about this, and she seemed to understand the situation (no sharing food, spoons, epipen use etc..).

For obvious reasons, I was not ready to post about this sooner. For so many parents this is their reality, and having to let their child go off to daycare, school, camp, activities, playdates etc, is frightening. It’s one thing to be in this peanut allergy friendly society, but for the kids and adults allergic to eggs, fish, fruits and so on, there are no egg free, fish free or fruit free establishments. Probably because I am so vigilant about my own allergy, avoiding honeydew and strawberries has taken on a whole life of it’s own. While I do think it’s easier to avoid fruits than peanuts, I think it is easier to avoid peanuts than eggs. I am wondering if you were told that you had an allergy, if given a choice, what you would choose to be allergic to? Please share.

:)

J.

Give It Up!

It’s food allergy awareness week in the USA, and the FAI (Food Allergy Initiative) has a campaign called “Give It Up”. The "Give It Up" campaign encourages children, parents, families and friends to show their support for the millions of people out there with food allergies by abstaining from eating a favorite food during the week.

It’s already Wednesday, so the week is almost over. I challenge all you readers to give up peanuts for the rest of the week. Next week, please comment on how this went, and what steps you took to remove peanuts from your diet.

This is a very informative website that I highly recommend.
http://www.faiusa.org


:)

J.