The Evolution of My Feelings About Food Allergies – From Annoyance to Empathy to Mild Activist

There is a toddler museum near my house that doesn’t allow any peanut products to be brought inside.  When I first saw that rule, I was mildly annoyed.  I know peanut allergies can be really serious, even fatal, but banning any trace of peanuts from an entire museum?  It seemed extreme.  Still, it’s not like my kids are eating peanut products 24/7, so it was more thought provoking than practically inconvenient.

Then, in March, the NYT Magazine’s cover story was about how to desensitize kids with severe allergies by exposing them little by little to the things that could kill them.  I felt so lucky, knock on wood, reading about the trials that these kids have gone through related to their food allergies and even the extreme treatment that they will have to endure for the rest of their lives to live “allergy free.”  One kid almost died when milk splashed on her skin!  I was near tears when one of my kids had a stomach flu and kept puking.  I can’t imagine the vigilance required and stress related to having a kid with severe food allergies.  I started feeling more empathy and less annoyance.

More recently, I read a Slate article and realized that not only should I empathize, but I can help in really simple ways that don’t take much effort at all.  The playground shouldn’t be stressful and while any parent of a kid with severe allergies is going to be on high alert, the rest of us should avoid anything that could contribute to other kids ending up in the hospital.  Here are some tips from the article:

• Don’t let your kid eat while playing.  He could drop pieces of food or wipe tiny traces of his food crumbs/allergens on communal play equipment.
• Don’t leave food unattended.  Those of us with kids know how fast little kids can be when they want something.  If a kid that doesn’t fully understand his allergies grabs a peanut, it could end very, very badly.
• After your kid is done eating, use wipes to wash her hands.  Hand sanitizer doesn’t kill the proteins in most foods that cause allergic reactions, and tiny amounts of such proteins can be lethal.

For me, I won’t be bringing anything with peanuts or eggs to communal spaces and I will try to avoid milk as well.  Why risk it?  My kids can eat these things at home.  I’m also going to try to start paying attention to the packaging of our common “to go” snacks (Cheerios, squeezy pouches, and puffs).  If they have trace amounts of common allergens like nuts, milk, or eggs, or are made in a facility with these things, I will avoid bringing them to communal places.  Of course, I can’t eliminate anything that any kid could be allergic to, but I can certainly be more mindful of my actions.  I won’t let my kids eat while playing and will make sure to thoroughly clean their hands, mouth, and area around where they ate before leaving.  As soon as my kids are old enough to understand, I will explain to them why it’s important to do these things so that they understand that their carelessness could be really dangerous to other kids.  I think this is a good opportunity to teach about community responsibility.

Now, lest you think I am some altruistic, selfless person, I’m not going to be so restrictive that my kids start feeling like they have severe food allergies themselves, but the least I can do, and that any of us can do, is to be more thoughtful about my actions.

Ok, so that settles it – I’m going to be a more thoughtful parent when using communal spaces, but will it make a difference?  I mean, how prevalent are severe allergies?  Is it common enough that I will actually make it easier for parents and kids who go to the playgrounds we go to?  It certainly seems like more kids have severe, life threatening allergies than when I was growing up, but maybe I just wasn’t paying attention because I was a kid or maybe there’s just more reporting about it.  I mean, there was that Freaks and Geeks episode when Bill almost died when Alan put a peanut in his sandwich, but other than that, I don’t remember food allergies being a big deal.  I don’t remember anyone ever carrying an EpiPen around for anything other than bee stings and I think I might have only seen that in My Girl.  So, I did some quick research to find out some basic information about the prevalence of food allergies.  Here’s what I found:

• “1 in 13 American children under age 18 now has a food allergy, as does 1 in 10 preschoolers.”  This was a bit higher than reported elsewhere.
• About 5% of kids under five years of age and 4% of kids 5 to 17 have at least one food allergy.  Almost 40 percent of those with food allergies have had a severe allergic reaction after consuming a food.  So that means in a room of 100 kids, 4-5 of them have at least one food allergy and 1-2 of them will have had a severe allergic, potentially life threatening allergic reaction.
• The rate of food allergies has more than doubled over the past decade.  Kids are also not growing out of their allergies as quickly as they were before.

Wow – this is scary stuff and I am so grateful that my kids don’t have severe food allergies.  Even though there are not many deaths related to food allergies, that doesn’t mean that close calls are not a terrifying experience for the kids and their families.

It makes me think that we should have some government intervention, though I’m not in favor of broad food bans.  How simple would it be to have eating areas in parks and post rules about cleaning up your allergens that could kill someone else’s kid?  What if these little actions that could be so helpful became as common as picking up after your dog?  If you didn’t do these things, you’d feel the silent scorn of the other parents and we all know how powerful that is!  Hmmm, maybe I will write a letter to my city’s parks department right now …

Pumping Logistics While Traveling Without Your Exclusively Breastfed Babies

I love being able to nurse my babies and pump milk for them to drink when I’m not around.  I mean, I don’t love pumping, but I love that they never have to drink formula.  Recently, I had to fly cross country (San Francisco (SFO) to Washington DC (DCA)) for work where I’d be for about ­2 days.  Before I left, I tried to find information about the logistics of pumping when traveling and couldn’t find that much information, so hopefully this post will help moms in the same position.

Since it was a long flight, I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with pumping.  From the time I left my house to the time I got to the hotel would be about 8 hours, so I would have to pump somewhere.  I decided that I would pump on the flight there because I saw online there was an empty seat next to me.  I hoped that the person in the aisle seat and the flight attendant would be women, but no such luck.  The guy in the aisle seat was kind of dopey.  He had his laptop on the middle tray and was facing me, so when I was getting set up to pump, I explained to him what I was doing, hoping that he would turn away, but he was so dopey that he didn’t really understand.  So, I spelled it out for him and thankfully he turned away awkwardly.  I still don’t really think he understood, but when I started half undressing under a nursing cover, he got the gist!  While I was pumping, the flight attendant came by with water and asked if I wanted any.  I was really thirsty and he was offering, so I said yes and reached out giving him a knowing smile since I was attached to a pump and had a nursing cover over me, clearly not your standard flight attire.  Since I had limited reach being attached to my pump, he obviously noticed.  He started walking away, then paused and said, do you mind if I ask you what that is.  I didn’t miss a beat and said it’s a breast pump.  His reaction was hilarious and his recovery was impressively quick.  He said, oh, I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t an oxygen tank because those aren’t allowed, but those (motioning to my pump) are.  I couldn’t help myself, so I asked if that happened often and he said, no, but that some people did bring portable oxygen, but they’re prohibited because they’re flammable.  The dopey guy just seemed dumbfounded that I was having a conversation while pumping.  Overall, it wasn’t bad and it was amusing to see people’s reactions.

I called the hotel in advance and let them know that I would need a fridge, freezer, and late checkout.  Initially, they told me that I wouldn’t be able to get late checkout.  I told them that I would need a private place to pump then after I checked out.  A few days later, they called me back and told me they had upgraded me to a room with a fridge, freezer, microwave (handy for sterilizing pump parts), and could stay until 4PM.  Hurray!  I was only away from home for about 60 hours total, but it didn’t dawn on me how frequently I’d have to pump since I wasn’t nursing at all.  Thankfully, the conference I attended was in the hotel I was staying at, so I just had to go upstairs, but it was hard timing my pumping.  Since conference session breaks are usually only about 10 minutes, it wasn’t long enough to go upstairs, pump, and get back downstairs, so I had to either sneak out of sessions early or walk in late.  It was okay, but not ideal.  Overall, the pumping in the hotel was a minor hassle, but fine.  I also didn’t think about how much milk I would end up lugging back.  It gets heavy!

The DCA airport security was ridiculous.  I didn’t want to go through the xray security screening, so I opted out.  Along with the free groping from TSA, they searched my bag, including my pump parts and cooler FULL of milk.  The guy doing this search was obviously not enjoying himself and quite frankly, I didn’t want him massaging my milk either.  Seriously, is this really making us all safer?  The lost productivity of these inane TSA procedures is infuriating, but I guess it’s a job creation program!

I didn’t think I’d be able to pump on the plane on my way home since the flight looked full online, so I decided that I would just pump in the airport right before my flight and then in the airport when I landed.  In the airport (DCA) before my flight, no one knew about the nursing lounges that I had read about online, but there was a “companion lounge”, which was a single stall bathroom without a working toilet and a changing table.  It wasn’t terrible, but it certainly wasn’t a “lounge”.  I pumped standing up because it didn’t feel particularly sanitary and there wasn’t really anywhere to sit.  On the plane, since I wasn’t going to pump, I put my pump and accessories in the overhead compartment, only to find that there was an empty seat next to me again!  Drat!  It would have been so convenient to pump on the plane since I had chatted for a long time with the guy in the aisle seat and he was super nice and had kids, but I was too lazy to get my bag and get set up.  Also, I read online that SFO has nice “nurseries”, the name they use for their nursing rooms, so a little bit of me wanted to check one out.  Mostly, I was just being lazy.

When I got to SFO, the nursery was conveniently located right by my gate and the gate attendant knew exactly where it was.  I picked up a phone outside and told the person who answered that I wanted to use the room and was given a code.  I went inside and there was a sink, a comfy chair, and music.  I set up, pumped, cleaned up, and off I went to be reunited with my boys.

All in all, pumping while traveling wasn’t terribly inconvenient, but it did feel a lot like uncharted territory – not because no one has ever done it before, but because I couldn’t find a lot of information about how to plan or what to expect before I went on my trip.

Tip Summary:

• Imagine your plan – what do you need?  I brought my pump, a freezer ziploc bag for my pump parts, way more milk storage bags than I thought I needed (I used almost all of them), two bottles (easier to pump into than bags and then I poured into bags), microwave sterilization bag, cooler bag, lots of ice packs (mini fridges don’t get that cold, so I kept ice packs with my milk in the fridge), extra batteries, pump bra, a separate bag for all my pumping stuff that I put in a carryon so I could just pull that out when I pumped on the plane.
• Try to make arrangements with your hotel in advance.  I’ve found that when you tell anyone that you’re a nursing mom and need accommodations, they do everything they can to help you out.   Well, other than TSA.
• Check your flight’s seating chart when you check in.  If you can, move your seat to a row where there’s an empty middle seat.  Also, I didn’t try, but I’ll bet if you explain to the gate attendant that you need to pump on the plane, they’ll try to find you two seats.

Happy travels!

Republicans Sign Brief in Support of Gay Marriage

I actually thought it might be April Fool’s Day when I saw this headline – Republicans Sign Brief in Support of Gay Marriage, but it’s not.  My non-cynical self says, “Hurray!  Finally.  How refreshing.”  My cynical self is not allowed to comment at this moment.

 

BLW on the Go?

We love babyled weaning, but now that C&R are eating a lot of food, I am trying to figure out how to conveniently do BLW on the go.  Food pouches have become all the rage in the last few years, but it sounds like most parents use these because their kids won’t eat other food.  (See related NYT article here.)  I like these because I can leave them in my diaper bag, but since they’re mostly applesauce, I want something that is more nutritionally balanced.

I want a convenient grab and go option for babies who love non-pureed food.  I’ve been just throwing things into small tupperware containers on our way out the door, but it would be really great if someone would start mass producing a healthy lunchable for babies.  Anyone have any good suggestions for me in the meantime?

Observations – 6-9 months

I can’t believe how time flies!  Someone recently told me that each day feels like forever, but the years fly by.  It hasn’t been a year yet, but our boys turned 10 months last week and it does feel like years ago that they were sharing a crib, lying immobile on their backs and sleeping all the time.  Months 6-9 have been the best ever (sound familiar?)!  So, here are my thoughts about months 6-9.

Stuff

I don’t have a ton of recommendations because at this point, everything has the potential to be a toy.  Some favorite non-toy toys are a measuring tape, water bottle, and cup handle.  The wooden spoon was confiscated after one baby nearly gave the other a concussion with his enthused spoon banging.  This has been a period of constant exploration.  It’s involved crawling, standing, and cruising (walking holding on to stuff).  We have lots of great toys, but I don’t think any of them are indispensable.  I do think that’s it’s important to have a bunch of different stuff for exploring.

We have a couple of musical tables, which I think are great because our babies love to pull themselves up to stand at them and cruise around from one end to the other.  I think you could achieve the same result by putting a few favorite toys on top of a small table to encourage standing and build those muscles.  Plus, this also has the benefit of not having irritating music!

There’s lots of movement happening during this time.  While barefoot is best for learning how to walk, it’s not that realistic if it’s cold out, so our kids usually wear socks and often wear shoes.  I still haven’t found the perfect socks, but the ones at Target seem to be the same as the Gap ones and are much cheaper.  They stay on most of the time and are non-slip.  We also haven’t found the perfect soft soled shoes, but we do like Robeez and other similar shoes.  Sometimes the elastic pinches, but I think that may just be because we’re between sizes.

Observations

Being a parent is endlessly humbling because babies are enigmas.  Every time you think you have figured something out (ie sleeping, feeding), something changes.  I usually try to find an explanation – I email my friends with older babies, I google whatever is happening, I ask my daycare provider, I email our pediatrician., but there are no answers, only theories.  I am starting to think that each time you have a kid, it’s like starting all over since every kid is different.  None of us know what we’re doing.  We are only trying our best and hoping for the best.  Realizinging this has been liberating.  Remembering it has been more difficult.  I still believe that lots of decisions I make are going to impact my kids’ lives forever even though I know this isn’t really true.

People without kids can’t fully understand “the schedule” (and they’re lucky they don’t have to deal with it!).  Good friends will just accept that things have changed and love you nonetheless.  We don’t adhere strictly to our babies’ schedule, but we are often late meeting friends and sometimes just cancel last minute when a nap goes awry.  This used to frustrate me.  Now, I have accepted that this is life.  As far as I can tell, none of our friends have held this against us.

People are weird – ignore them or tell your friends and laugh about it.  Here’s an example – when I was pregnant, a woman in my office asked if I was planning on nursing.  When I said yes, she said, on multiple occasions, don’t beat yourself up if it doesn’t work out because it’s hard.  Fair enough.  After I gave birth and was nursing C&R, she repeatedly expressed awe and amazement.  When she saw me putting milk in the fridge or closing my door to pump, she’d always say something about the huge sacrifice I was making by pumping at work.  I don’t think it’s that big a deal, but ok, I won’t argue with you if you tell me I’m amazing.  Then, about a month ago, she starting harassing me about not nursing anymore because my boys were too old.  I believe her exact words were “When are you going to give those boys some formula?  When they can ask for milk, they’re too old.”  Seriously, wtf?!  First of all, did you hit your head because you were just telling me how great it was for C&R’s immunity that they are drinking breastmilk.  Second, babies ask for milk from day one when they worm their little bodies toward your boob.  Also, my boys don’t talk yet, so it’s not like they’re saying, “Mom – let me suck your boob.”  Apparently, for her, when C&R turned 9 months, nursing went from being natural and the best thing for your babies to creepy (I won’t even get into how dumb it is when people think nursing is creepy since it involves boobs and therefore must be sexual).  See, people are weird.  They don’t make sense.  They think you want their opinion.  Don’t waste your precious time trying to explain yourself or understand what they’re talking about.  Just do your thing.

Babies fall.  They (probably) won’t be permanently damaged!  When C&R began standing, cruising, and even taking some tentative steps, they also began falling, bonking their heads, climbing over each other, pushing each other out of the way, and crying.  At first, I tried to prevent it – I would hover near by and catch them any time they fell, but this wasn’t really helping them learn that falling is bad and that you should try to avoid it.  Now, I (mostly) let them fall and practice not falling.  It’s really hard, but they’re learning and soon enough I’ll be worried about other things like how I can keep them from playing tackle football!

Discovering Banana Cream Pie

I grew up in a family where we didn’t eat a lot of sweets growing up.  We weren’t deprived.  It just wasn’t part of what we did, so I never realized I was supposed to want cookies, candy, cake, etc.  We had it sometimes, it just wasn’t a big deal.  Because of this, there are lots of common desserts I’ve never had or didn’t have until much later in life.  Here’s a magical story about how I discovered banana cream pie.  It had always sounded really gross to me.  Banana pie?  A pile of whipped cream?  Ick.  I wasn’t interested.

(Side story about whipped cream: I didn’t taste real whipped cream until I waitressed at an Italian cafe in high school that served it.  Then, it wasn’t until my mid-20s that I discovered it was really easy to make fresh whipped cream yourself!  A few weeks ago, I discovered Clover whipped cream in a can tastes just like homemade whipped cream!  (Thank you Sarah T. for changing my life.))

I went to Tartine last year for the first time with a friend who was visiting SF.  (She moved here recently and I’m pretty sure Tartine had a part in her decision).  Everything we ate there was pretty good, above average, but not necessarily worth the wait or the price.  My friend got the banana cream pie to go and home we went.  For some reason, fate possibly, she left the pie in my fridge and flew back to Boston.  Well, what’s a girl to do with a pie in her fridge?  Try it, of course!  Holy crap – this is not your ordinary banana cream pie.  (I’ve since had “normal” banana cream pie and it’s not great.)

Tartine’s banana cream pie has a layer of caramel and chocolate on the bottom of a deliciously flaky crust, with both banana cream and chunks of banana, real whipped cream, and shavings of chocolate on top.

Ummm, hello?  This is magic in your mouth, amazing banana cream pie!  It’s a good thing Tartine is across the Bay, has insanely long lines, and is in a neighborhood that has no parking, or I’d be buying banana cream pies every day!

Random Mom-Related Ruminations

• I find myself referring to myself in the 3rd person (“Mommy loves you.”  “Smile at mama.”  “Do you want mama to read you a book?) and have realized that lots of moms do this.  My mom also refers to herself in the 3rd person when talking to my kids.  Why don’t people find this as weird as when other people refer to themselves in the 3rd person?  Why don’t dads or granddads do this?
• Will there ever be a movement to dreamfeed adults?  Wouldn’t it be nice if when I was half asleep, my partner just started feeding me delicious food?  (… as long as he brushed my teeth afterwards of course!)
• There is so much controversy about co-sleeping.  Before I gave birth, I knew that I wouldn’t co-sleep because I thought I would roll over and squash my babies.  When, however, my twins were just a few months old, I often found myself waking up with a baby next to me after falling asleep while nursing.  Now I love co-sleeping and get sad when my babies want their own space in our bed instead of letting me cozy up next to them.  I know, I know, it’s just the beginning of them exerting their independence!
• The arbitrariness of high stakes decisionmaking – I was completely paralyzed while researching strollers (hours and hours reading reviews, making pro/con lists), but after reading one book about babyled weaning, decided to feed my babies whatever they wanted and ignored the traditional 4 day rule.  Report: babies are fine (quite chubby actually), no allergies noted yet.
• We’re getting a minivan.  It’s taken me over a year to decide that this is the best thing for us and that I am okay with it.  I have gone from being depressed about it to kind of excited about it and that makes me wonder why I was depressed about it in the first place when it objectively is the best choice for my family.  I also find myself having to defend my decision to minivan haters.  Why is there such a negative stigma about minivans?  They’re pretty ugly, I’ll give you that, but the most common alternative, a full size SUV, is ugly too.  (Not to mention that I have to climb into SUVs because I’m short, they have less space, and they don’t have sliding doors.)  So, what is the problem with driving a “mom car”?  I am a mom and it will be my (well, our) car.  Why isn’t it called a family car?  Maybe people could embrace the minivan more if we could divorce it from it’s sexist connotations and just view it as a spacious car with a lot of seating.
• I avoid BPA in any product for our kids, which is easy now that all kid related products are labeled BPA-free, but since my babies now put everything in their mouths, I’ve started wondering if there is BPA in my hair elastic, hair, nail file,  socks, wooden spoon, cardboard box, board book, our dining table, yogurt container, etc, etc.  What will I think of to worry about next?

Note to me and moms like me: Babies are tough.  Moms are the good kind of crazy.  Do what’s best for your family and try not to get wrapped up in what everyone else thinks.