Welcome to an Egg Allergy, Mom and Dad

Welcome!

On March 3rd, we rushed our 10 month old son to the ER after dinner for an allergic reaction to eggs.  There are no food allergies in our immediate or extended family so we tried eggs before the 12 month mark.  I've gotten a few judgy faces on this, but I'm not convinced that waiting until after his first birthday to give him eggs would've made a difference.

Fortunately, he did not have any respiratory system compromise, but he was COVERED in itchy hives and vomited twice.  It was the single scariest moment of my life since the day Michael's doctor called him to the look at the dark spot on an X-Ray.  Benadryl and OraPred did the trick and he was fine by 11pm.

Allergy panels were negative.  Blood work showed a Class 2 allergy to egg yolks.  Doc's recommendation: avoid all eggs.  "How about baked goods, Doc?", we ask.  The response we hear "come back in and pay us $1,000 to do a closely monitored oral challenge so we can tell you to avoid baked goods too" (Doc really said, "an oral challenge is the only way to determine if Hudson can have baked goods with eggs").

Our action plan: avoid all eggs.

I went a whopping two weeks before screwing up.  I made a crock pot pork loin with green beans and added dry Italian seasoning/dressing mix.  I gave Hudson one...ONE...green bean and he spit it out.  The next morning, Hudson's school calls us to say he's covered in a full body rash.  I panic, look up the ingredients from the dry mix, and crumple into a ball of guilt.  It MAY CONTAIN egg.  I have poisoned our son.  Michael got Benadryl in him and rushed him to the pediatrician (only one organ system compromised this time, and it was the middle of the day, so we didn't go the ER route).   Turns out it was scarlatina from strep.  The guilt was not alleviated by this.

Regardless, a hypervigilance for eggs has kicked in for me.

This blog is really for my husband and me.  I plan to use it as a action station for websites, resources, and lists of egg-safe restaurants, snacks, recipes, etc.

If you're curious, Class 2 doesn't really tell us much.  Doc says he "might" grow out of it.  But they are finding this happens at later ages now.  So we'll be testing him every year until the bloodwork shows us the IgE is gone.  Could be that at 7, he still tests positive but he could still grow out of it by his teenage years.

Should be an interesting journey.  I'm fully aware that this is likely a very mild allergy and our experience will be nothing like that of parents with children with more severe allergies, but it doesn't make it less scary or real to us.