Allergies.

P5 has a doctors appt to discuss his potential allergies. Now that he is eating more solids, he's started having reactions pop up. The culprits so far have been strawberries, eggs, and possibly ginger (he had a reaction at a restaurant to a pumpkin waffle, and after asking for the ingredient list the only thing he hadn't had before was ginger). There are a lot of allergies in my family, both seasonal and food. My mom, brother, and niece all have a severe peanut/nut allergy. I get violently ill from shellfish. My brother, sister and I are all allergic to penicillin.

Coincidentally, my book club just read a great book all about allergies called Don't Kill the Birthday Girl by Sandra Beasley. It was part memoir (the author has many extreme allergies) and part historical non-fiction on allergies and the standards for food labeling and allergy protocol. It was interesting and also eye opening to read about how insensitive people can be about allergies. I guess since I grew up in a house where allergies were taken so seriously, I didn't know any different. But during the book club meeting and discussion one of our members was quite rude and defensive about how she thinks allergy sensitivity is way overblown. Obviously she nor anyone in her immediate family has any food allergies (actually, I suppose I know first hand that she is not sensitive to allergies as there was a time last year when my family was going to her house for dinner. I had told her beforehand that I couldn't have shellfish and when we showed up they were serving shrimp pizza. She suggested I pick the shrimp off. Um, yeah, it doesn't work that way. I ended up eating salad.)

Anyway, I am hoping that P5 will grow out of some of these allergies as he gets older, but for the meantime I am anxious to learn how to manage them and to make the necessary accommodations within our family to keep him safe.