How I’ve Come to Terms With Being an “Allergy” Mom
“Life is about not knowing and then doing something anyway” — Mark Manson
When you decide to have children, you expect it to change your life for good, forever. You don’t know what that means, but you’re getting into it anyway. Because “life is all about not knowing and then doing something anyway”, right?
My firstborn threw me into a rollercoaster. I’m not getting down anytime soon. But I’m learning to live with it. And more often than not, I’m lovin’ it. Even though I’m an “allergy” mom and it hit me without warning.
I was 38 weeks pregnant and went for my weekly checkup on Monday, the 1st of October. The doctor told me — “no sign that he’s getting ready. We’ll meet again on the 8th”, which, by the way, was the day I was turning 29.
That Was the Last Thing I Got To Plan
From there, things turned unpredictable. Or that’s how they really were from the very beginning, and I was the only one under the impression that everything’s well planned and right on track?
Four days later, I went into sudden labor. I called my doc at 3 AM, and she didn’t quite believe me but sent me to the hospital for a checkup anyway. 18 hours later, my son was being delivered through an emergency c-section after traumatic labor that wasn’t going as… planned.
Our stay in the hospital was longer than planned.
His jaundice was a few weeks longer than planned.
His first cold came at only six weeks, something we certainly hadn’t planned for.
And his cow’s milk protein intolerance was suspected just about that time, too.
Of course, neither that intolerance nor the many others we’ve discovered once he started solid foods were “planned”.
Fast-forward 30 months later and we have some clues of what we’re doing. The only plans we’re making are about this rotation diet, where we try to eliminate the foods he doesn’t tolerate and rotate the ones he does so that he won’t develop an intolerance for any of them.
We also plan to keep him away from the foods he’s not supposed to eat, which he still finds around the house since his grandparents live with us.
You Can’t Plan for the Future, Only Choose in the Moment
I mean, of course, you can plan for the future, but you always have to be prepared for things to go south. Or north. It’s just like in Alan Watts’ old story with the Chinese farmer:
When his horse ran away, his neighbors said, “what a pity”; he only said “maybe”.
When his horse came back with other seven wild horses, he heard lots of “good fortune”; he only said “maybe”.
Again, when his son fell and broke his leg while taking care of one of the wild horses, his neighbors thought it’s such bad luck; he only said “maybe”.
Finally, when soon after that, army officers came into the village to recruit young men and rejected his son because of his condition, the neighbors thought it was good fortune. He kept saying “maybe”.
Alan Watts said that you never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.
Life is nothing but endless unpredictability. In the grand scheme of things, the “little” things that happen to you, no matter how big or small, good or bad they seem to you, cannot be judged individually.
Food Intolerances. Good Fortune? Bad Luck? Maybe
I’ve long given up trying to figure it out.
When I came to realize that my son couldn’t eat: dairy, beef, fish, nuts, eggs, potatoes, eggplants, green peppers, tomatoes, beans, lentils, cabbage, spinach, apples, citrus fruits, or forest fruits, it felt like the end of the world.
Never mind that I was going crazy in the process of trying to find out what’s making him feel so miserable. Or that I was stubborn enough to keep breastfeeding him and I was supposed to rule out all those foods from my diet too. But the more I learned, the worse and more desperate I felt.
At first, I understood that he wasn’t developing what is clinically called an allergy but rather an intolerance. I thought — thank God he’s not having allergic reactions!
Then, I realized that intolerances could manifest anytime between one and four days after consuming a particular food. And I was like — Gosh, how on Earth am I supposed to spot the problem foods he has been eating throughout the past four days when all he can tell me is “oaaaaa, oaaaa, oaaaa”?! If he had allergies, at least I would have known immediately what caused it.
At First, I Got Scared. Really Scared. Then, I Thought That Maybe…
Maybe I can go through this, even though I was scared like never before.
Not as scared as when I brought him home from the hospital. Then, he had severe jaundice and wasn’t waking up for feedings. When the ugly head of postnatal depression was grinning at me and making me think, “I can’t raise this child. I can’t even make him eat. How am I going to keep him alive?!”
It was a different kind of being scared. More subtle, but more dangerous. It was preventing me from trying pretty much anything new. I didn’t want to leave the house, because I didn’t feel capable of planning all his rotation meals and snacks while on the go. I was afraid of going to new places where he could get into contact with other children and want to eat things he’s not supposed to. I was keeping him away from the kitchen, especially when we were cooking for the rest of the family, to keep him away from ingredients he would want to play with and eat.
I’m not sure how or when I got to realize that all that had to stop. But I’m glad I did.
As I was gathering the courage to let my son be a more active presence in our daily activities, I realized that he was growing and more capable of understanding certain things. I found a few foods he seemed to tolerate and rotate those, while slowly and gradually experimenting with others. I also convinced myself that the occasional slips weren’t necessarily a tragedy. And I kept going with the flow.
All of a sudden, I was no longer in a swamp but in a small mountain stream, crystalline and with a barely perceptible flow. Barely perceptible, but still, there was a flow.
I’ve Tamed My Fear. And I’m Living a Better Life. We All Are
Rather than calling them issues, I prefer to call them limitations. So, with all these limitations my son has, we had to adjust our eating habits too. I started as I was still breastfeeding, and I kept going. My husband supported us. And we’ve all embarked on a journey we would never have guessed.
Today, 95% of everything we eat is homemade. We buy the bread for the grandparents, but we no longer eat bread, my husband and me. We take our cereals, gluten-free, for breakfast. We eat lots of legumes and fruits, mostly raw. We’ve said goodbye to sausages and hams and other processed meats, as well as sweets. We eat less, and we do our best to buy organic ingredients.
We still have a long way ahead to a normal life. And I’m not even sure what that normal would look like to us. But I can see that my son now tolerates some other foods in small quantities. He’s two and a half and enjoys eating things that I detested eating while breastfeeding him, like amaranth porridge.
A Few Things Helped Me the Most
I stopped looking into the past and wondering what have I done wrong. I used to blame myself for what I called a failed delivery, and I thought that his food intolerances were partially caused by the fact that he was born through a c-section. But I now know that thinking of this doesn’t help me in any way, especially since I didn’t get to choose the c-section.
I stopped looking into the future and fearing how my son will integrate into a social group once he goes to kindergarten. I used to dread the thought of him joining groups and doing things with other children. I now prefer to support him grow as confidently and joyful as possible, talking about food and how it helps or affects us individually.
I focus on what we can do today to have a great life. If it’s a day we laughed at least once, it’s a good day.
And, ultimately, I try to remember what Mark Manson said in his Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck:
“Life is about not knowing and then doing something anyway. All of life is like this. It never changes. Even when you’re happy. Even when you’re farting fairy dust. Even when you win the lottery and buy a small fleet of Jet Skis, you still won’t know what the hell you’re doing. Don’t ever forget that. And don’t ever be afraid of that.”