Photo by Chas Redmond

Last Fall when I received the results from my allergy testing, I felt like I was on the edge of a cliff, teetering as I looked at what I was dealing with. We debated getting the kids tested. We didn’t want to put them through anything without reason, but I really wanted to know. In the end, my husband’s company helped make the decision. They decided to downgrade employee health insurance, so I made a rush call to get the kids in for bloodwork before the end of the year.

I expected a few allergies, especially since our youngest has been having reactions now that she eats some food or when I eat something I normally avoid (she’ll be tested when she is older). I wasn’t expecting the results we received – that all of our children have extensive food allergies.

That was the gust of wind that pushed me off the cliff, tumbling into the whirlpool waiting below. I went through some mama guilt. Did I do anything to cause this? Had I passed on my faulty genetics? But as I was struggling in that whirl-pool, I had a much greater reason to fight through. Children will do that for you.

We are addressing the allergies in phases. Right now we are working on going completely gluten, dairy, soy, tomato, yeast, and corn free. We’ll add in some more a little bit at a time. The kids are handling it surprisingly well. My six year old had one near breakdown at Costco, when out of the 15 or so samples, there were none that our family could eat. She was upset that there wasn’t anything she could eat. My husband and I pointed her toward the cart and explained that she could eat everything that we were buying, much to her relief.

It’s a new beginning for all of us. My children were headed down the path that I was. I look at my eight year old, just a few shy years of the age I was when my body first crashed. I have absolutely no regrets about getting them tested.