One of the most stressful parts of parenting (especially living rural) is introducing allergens and not knowing what the outcome is going to be.

I first discussed this with my health care provider because we live over 40 minutes from our nearest hospital, and if something went wrong then I would want to be able to act quickly. Some of the best advice that I was given, was if it's a common allergy (like the top 9 that we are about to look into) then you could do this outside a medical centre or hospital. 

 

So far, we have introduced all the major allergens, and we haven't had a reaction... from those.

We did have a bit of a rash around the face after eating some berries, so I will include an additional section on this at the bottom.

The top 9

 

Eggs:

The way that we were advised to approach introducing eggs, was in two different stages- starting with the yolk. There is recent information to suggest that you should give both yolk and whites together. However, you can have an allergy to the yolk and not the white, or vice versa. I figured that if there was going to be a reaction then I would want to know what part of the egg that Jimmy was allergic to. We started with the egg yolk. See allergen recipes.

We ended up doing a full week of egg yolk only foods and then the following week started to introduce the whites as well.

 

Peanuts:

So, if you have ever known someone to have a serious peanut allergy or have seen a reaction, then you would understand why there is so much concern around introducing peanuts.

Once again, we took the advice from our healthcare nurse and started by rubbing a really small amount of Homemade peanut butter to the inside of Jimmy's bottom lip and then giving him 15 minutes to see if there was any reaction.

Check out my video with how to make homemade peanut butter, that way you are able to introduce peanuts to your child in an easy way without the concerns of added salt or sugar.

 

Other nuts:

We introduced almonds the following week from introducing peanuts. I followed the same method of peanut butter but did this with natural almonds. I also made almond milk and with the left-over almond meal I added this to smoothies, oatmeal and overnight oats.

 

Sesame:

Ok, I actually enjoyed introducing this one. I figured we hadn't had a reaction from peanuts or other nuts, so this one was likely to give the same results; and what I loved most about this - HUMMUS! 

Hummus at every meal, I'm not sure whether this was a treat for him or me, but it was a delicious week of testing sesame as an allergen. Once again, check out the allergy recipe section for a heap of different hummus recipes (with and without tahini).

 

Fish:

I was recommended that when we introduced fish, to NOT start with salmon or tuna as these were the most common fish allergies. We started 

 

Shellfish:

 

 

Soy:

 

 

Wheat:

 

 

Cows milk/dairy:

 

 

And then there was.. berries. We had introduced berries in the form of smoothies using a packet of the frozen stuff formt he supermarket. However, we bought some fresh blueberries that were in season and decided to blitz them into some yoghurt for Jimmy's dinner.. and boom.. within about 5 mins he had splotchy red hives around his mouth. I'm sure you can understand there was a bit of panic sending him to bed shortly with a reaction. Safe to say that I did not sleep great that night as I was in his room throughout the night checking he was ok.