When I found out I was pregnant with our first child, I immediately starting doing all sorts of research on EVERYTHING babies! I wanted the best for our child and I wanted to make sure we knew what the heck we were doing when he was born! We both have lots of siblings so we had a rough idea but there’s lots of things that have changed over the years and we had a lot to learn!
One thing that I was really focused on was doing our best to make sure our child didn’t have allergies!
What are the main allergens?
- Nuts
- Soy
- Dairy
- Fish
- Wheat
- Eggs
- Animals
- Grasses
Things I did to expose our child to these allergens:
- When I was pregnant I ate all of these things! Obviously within moderation, I would eat anything my stomach would let me handle, but I would try to eat as big of a variety as I could!
- When he was born I breastfed. Now, I understand not every mom is able to do this and I completely understand, but if you are able to I highly recommend it! Breast milk is MAGIC! I would still eat a variety of foods, but now that I wasn’t pregnant I was able to eat a lot more (no more food aversions, yayy!). My main concern was nuts, so I would eat peanut butter, almond butter, assorted nuts, peanut M&Ms (these were my favorite), etc.
- Our other main concern was animals, we have 3 dogs, so we prayed and prayed he would not be allergic to dogs! Of course I deep cleaned the house before he was born but there was only so much I could do with the amount of dog hair that we had on an hourly basis. So when we brought him home that was an immediate exposure, because the dogs all sniffed him and while we tried our best not to let them lick him, he definitely got licked a couple times. We would take them on car rides together and make sure the dogs got plenty of cuddles with the baby.
- Once he started crawling there was no holding him back, we would turn our backs for 2 seconds and he would be in the dog toys, pulling the dog’s hair, or eating the tiniest piece of something off the floor. It was inevitable, I would sweep, vacuum, mop, etc and he would still find something to stick in his mouth! All I could think and hope for was “man this boy is gonna have a great immune system!”
- We would go on car rides all the time, and when it was nice, we would roll the windows down and let the wind blow through the car in all sorts of different areas.
- We lived next to a cattle farm and next to crop fields, so there were a bunch of things that were floating through the air, especially during harvest, just while we were outside swinging.
- When he was 4 months old we gave him peanut butter for the first time and he loved it! We watched him and then gave it to him again a couple weeks later and then again a couple weeks after that, so on and so forth. So far, so good (knock on wood)!
- He had just hit the crawling phase in the middle of summer so it was a great time to get outside and enjoy the weather! I would put him in the grass, and surprisingly he didn’t mind the texture of the grass, and inevitably he would grab handfuls and before I could get up and grab it out of his hand he had it in his mouth! Obviously I would pull it out of his mouth, but there was something else that just made me go “oh well, I hope he’ll be ok!”
- Once he started eating solids, we would give him EVERYTHING that he could “chew” at the time. I made all sorts of different purees, and we would give him all sorts of meats, eggs, fruits, veggies, etc. We even gave him little bites of sweets every now and then (I know smack our hands) but it exposed him to other ingredients besides just sugar.
The moral of my story is, exposure is good!
You want to expose your kids to as much as you can (within reason) at a young age so they can learn for themselves and their bodies can develop their own immunity.
I realize that not everybody has pets, or lives on a farm, etc. but the more you can access for your kids the better!
Don’t be scared to give them food! It’s what makes the world go round!
I know one thing that holds a lot of parents back from giving their kids certain foods, is the choking hazard. We bought a lifevac for both of our diaper bags so that anywhere our son is, the life vac is also. So just in case there is a choking incident, we have a rescue right away! I love this, and luckily we have never had to use it, but it is such a weight off our shoulders knowing that if there is an emergency we know how to handle it. And it gives me a much more relaxed feeling about letting him try new foods.
SO don’t let your fear interfere with your kids needs!
