Coming soon...

Baby number two is almost here -less than two weeks until I see him.  A pregnancy is the most amazing miracle.  There is a tiny human growing inside my belly right now.  I think he's training to be the next soccer champion from the feel of his kicks.  I love the kicks. It's a remainder of life and what we are capable of creating.  I can't wait to meet him.  I have always wanted two boys and two girls (yes, AND) but I think I'm good with just two boys.  I'm looking forward to the years ahead with my three men by my side.

I couldn't have asked for more with Aiden. He's so sweet and lovable. Loves to give me kisses and squeezes and has a huge personality. I heard him reading his "Polar Bear Polar Bear" book yesterday by himself.  I cannot be any more proud!  

I think my life would be almost perfect if food allergies did not exist. I can't wait until he understand what food allergies are so that I can stop having anxiety attacks.  I'm looking forward to the time when Aiden asks... "mommy, is this safe for me?" or better yet, the time he can read his own ingredients.

My favorite person in the whole world (soon there will be two favorite people :)

Food allergies to the extreme

When I think of food allergies, I think of a child not being able to eat one or two or even 8 types of foods.  Never do I think about those kids that are allergic to most foods and have one or a couple safe foods they can eat. And if they do eat something they aren't suppose to, they get violently sick.  It's crazy to me to think how much food can hurt a person. Food is suppose to be nourishment, not a killer.

This video makes me so sad and I would love to see him eat pasta or something simple. But It's also overwhelming (probably my pregnant hormones) to see him so happy.  He looks like such a wonderful little boy and seems to still be full of joy, like a boy his age should be. 

Dr. McDougall rocks!

I absolutely love this video (below). I might be going on a starch and veggie diet really soon.

Everything that Dr. McDougall says makes total sense and all we have to do is go back to basics. Go back to the world of diet before it was Westernized. The simple meals of potatoes, rice, beans and vegetables.   I need to learn about spices because you can make any meal delicious with just some simple spices.  

This diet that Dr. McDougall talks about will help me tremendously with feeding Aiden and avoiding his allergens.  It's a vegan diet so you automatically avoid Milk and Eggs and you can easily avoid Soy and Peanuts as well. 

I haven't been this excited since baking my first egg, milk, soy, nut free cake for my son and watching him devour it like a child should.

Food Allergies still suck, but at least it taught me to be more aware of what goes into our bodies and the harm it can do to some.  Food is powerful. It can kill and it can heal.

Now off the find some recipes. 

Our food supply is dangerous!

I am reading a book called The China Study and as a vegetarian, one particular comment struck me hard. The author called some vegetarians as junk food vegetarians and after looking at my diet, I am exactly that.  I always thought I was so much healthier because I'm a vegetarian but recently I have been doing a ton of research about the food I have been eating for so many years.

"some people become vegetarian only to gorge on refined carbohydrate pasta made with refined grains, sweets, pastries, dairy, and added oils in place of meat. I refer to these people as junk food vegetarians because they are not consuming a nutritious diet.  In addition to eating the wrong kind of plant based diet weight loss maybe elusive if a person never engages in any physical activity"

I am about 11 weeks pregnant and when people ask me what gender do I prefer, I usually answer the one without food allergies.  I no longer blame myself for giving Aiden these allergies. I blame our food supply and I blame the money-hungry industry that will do anything and everything just to make the food we trust -faster and bigger for more profitability. I blame the Bocca burgers I ate daily which have been re-engineered. The only way to feel safe is to find food that is 100% organic and food that have a simple "NON-GMO" stamp on the box.


It seems like we have to ask for a raise just to afford healthy food for our family. Just because you are buying fruits or vegetables no longer means you are healthy since most of them are covered in pesticides.

The video below has changed my life. It has changed how I look at food and how I will live my life and how I will feed my family for the rest of our lives.  This is a long way from home because I was raised on Kielbasa, uncooked hot-dogs, fried foods and desert after every meal.

Robyn O'Brien talks about an eye opening statistic...

US has the highest rates of cancer in the world!

1 out of 2 American Men and 1 out of 3 American Women are expected to get cancer in their lifetime. 

1 out of 8 Women have breast cancer

1 in 10 of those breast cancer patients are genetic

9 in 10 are environmentally triggered

"is there something foreign in our food now that was not there when we were kids?  in the 1990's a new protein was engineered in our food supply. "

Allergy friendly BBQ

So far, all I have done on this blog is vent about my son's allergies.  They suck. Really-really-really suck!  But my husband and I recently hosted a BBQ at our house and we made sure that it is completely safe for Aiden. Which means, no dairy, soy, eggs, nuts.  Friendly to a vegetarian and a meat eater. 

On the menu: Hot dogs, Good dogs, Veggie burger, beef burger, turkey burger, corn on the cob, mixed veggies and pasta

Ok.. so there were a few slices of cheese going around, but Aiden wouldn't have an anaphylactic reaction to that.

For desert we had Enjoy Life's brownie cookies and So Delicious chocolate ice cream with an allergy friendly cone.  All the kids LOVED the ice cream and my son is the biggest fan.

The best part of it all, I was able to relax and enjoy watching my son run around with other kids while having an ice cream cone in his hands.  And to make things even more exciting, seeing all the other kids with ice cream cones in their hands near my son and I'm not a mama-bear going on an attack.

Some photos of this fantastic day!

Aiden having an ice cream cone for the first time. wow, it's cold! 

This is how the summer days should be.

My reality

The reality is that at any moment someone can slip.  Every time someone forgets to wash their hands when they walk through our door I cringe.  Every time someone touches Aiden's face I want to go on an attack.  Just recently a little girl kissed Aiden and as cute as it is, it is also scary. This particular mom understood since her daughter cannot eat wheat but most parents don't understand.  I usually have to interview the mom with what their child ate that day, just incase there was some sort of lip contact.  Eyes start rolling and the dirty looks start coming.  Unless you are a parent of a Food Allergic kid or if you witness someone you truly love go into an anaphylactic reaction, you will never totally understand it.  But please at least have the compassion to not roll your eyes when I'm standing right in front of you.  I get it, it's rude to tell you not to touch my son or not to give him that cookie.  I mean, what kind of a mother does not let a grandparent touch their own grandchild? or what kind of a mother does not let a stranger give him a cookie?

At the end of the day I have a child that is sleeping in his own bed and not in the ER.  Until he himself understand food allergies, it is his fathers and mothers duty to protect him. I have cried too many tears because of these stupid allergies and I want nothing more than for my son to be free of them and to have a normal life. To play with other kids without worry. To go out to dinner and enjoy having desert that is ordered from the menu, not from what mom baked couple days or weeks earlier.  I want nothing more than for a little girl to give Aiden a huge kiss and a hug. 

I wonder how will these allergies affect Aiden as an adult?  Will he be like Sloane Miller and still enjoy life? Will he develop some sort of a compulsive disorder and wash his hands every time someone or something touches them?  Will he lock himself in his room and never come out?  Will he travel the world?  Will he be smart and cautious or rebellious?  I catch myself thinking about the future much more frequently than I probably should.

I just hope and pray that he will always be as happy as he is now. 

Bye bye sesame!

Farewell! Bye! Adios! Ja ne! Bis Dann! Ciao! Dowidzenia! Peace! 

oh wait!  Good bye sesame and hello sesame, we can actually have stuff with tahini and not freak out now.

Hello, Hi, Hola, Czesc, Welcome, aloha..

Aiden outgrew his sesame allergy! yay!  and we are slowly kicking milk and soy in the butt too.  I am so happy!  For a long time we though he was allergic to tomatoes, chicken, beef, fish, beans and so many other things.  It still doesn't explain the breakout he had when he tried Pollack fish but we'll give it another try again soon and hopefully it was just his Polish skin being super sensitive (as my Polish allergist said).

We found this awesome allergist and finally had new tests done. He was tested for almost everything we could have thought of and the results were.. Drum roll..

Sesame -gonzo! 

Milk - super duper low levels

Soy - soy who? Almost gone

Eggs - you mother f*cker! Hate you more than you can imagine.  (Levels almost quadrupled)

Peanuts - Die die die die die! That’s all I have to say to you! 

No other allergy found -yay!  So we only have to worry about egg and peanuts.  Hopefully by next year his egg allergy will start disappearing and we are only stuck with one, which hopefully will one day disappear also -a girl can dream.

So what's up with the gagging whenever he has meat, beans and other things? Or the rashes that he gets from some foods?  He's Polish and ridiculously sensitive. In other words -he has my skin.  Someone will touch me and I get a black and blue. If I get mad, I look like I'm a tomato and I get this awesome looking rash all over my chest.  The gagging is because he hates meat. I don't blame him -it really is gross. That's my boy!!!!!!!!! 

Since getting the results we have expanded our food options for him. He eats veggies!!!!! I realized he will eat probably any vegetable if it's mixed in with avocado and offered on a chip. In a guacamole dish ONLY.  yeah, he's weird like that.  But who cares, he's eating and loving every bite. 

Here is my little boy being completely awesome. 

And yes, his ears ARE this big! Again, after his mommy

Children with allergies and their vegetarian mothers

I have such mixed feelings about this.  I keep having the mommy guilt that I gave Aiden these allergies by being vegetarian and not having enough protein in my diet during the pregnancy. I wasn't a healthy vegetarian during the pregnancy and probably that's the main cause. But it just stinks. 

I want to get pregnant again and I want to make sure I'm doing everything right. I need to make sure I have enough zinc, enough calcium, enough protein and so on.  All of these things were not on my mind during my first pregnancy because I had gestational diabetes and my main concern was carbs and sugar intake.

The chances of me having gestational diabetes during my next pregnancy are high so I need to find a healthy balance for being a diabetic vegetarian.

A recent photo of my super awesome kido

Things are looking good...

All of these allergies and being a vegan has made me so aware of food. I can't just go to a store and pick up a candy bar at the checkout counter like I use to, that's a good thing. I plan. I review. I imagine. I test. I plan even more. There is a level of dedication and inspiration that comes with having a child with allergies. I wish he could eat more but at the same time it made me a healthier and more aware person.

I took Aiden to a nutritionist last week because even though I had found amazing recipes on line and have been cooking like I'm a topnotch chef, it's still not enough. He's very picky and doesn't want to try new things. The nutritionist gave me good ideas and some that actually worked. She gave me a meal plan which I sort of laughed when I saw it since there is NO WAY Aiden will try half of these things. But if he can at least like 10% from that list than that is a huge success.

One of the ideas she gave me is Almond butter. I knew all along that Aiden had a peanut allergy, not almond but I was still scared so I avoided it but she told me how healthy it can be so I gave it a try. I went to Mrs. Greens that night and got a tube of fresh almond butter and gave it a try. He tried it but quickly pushed it away. Not interested. So I took two pieces of Chex cereal and made it a sandwich with almond butter in between and gave it another try. He loved it! I though he was going to bite my finger off for more. So I started putting almond butter on a slice of pizza dough and again -he loved it!

I tried sting beans with the intention he will hate it and he actually ate some! Still no meat, which I'm secretly happy about. Eden pasta is still a huge success and he eats it daily. But at least now it’s not the only thing he eats.

Another suggestion was to add flax seeds into his oatmeal which I have been doing and he doesn’t even notice the difference. Extra snacks which should always include some veggies and fruits. And no snacks one hour before/after his main mails. I also had to limit his milk. That was the hardest part but it took a few days and he’s now on 20 to 24 oz of milk per day (from about 40). This increased his appetite tremendously. He also started sleeping through the night so he’s no longer getting calories at night. Things are looking good.

My happy little boy..

Before and After

This is what Aiden looked like at 3 months old. I avoided taking photos of him when his face was inflamed so this photo is actually not during his worst inflammation.





that was then... and this is now...





This is what milk and eggs can do to a baby! It's very upsetting to know that he suffered like this for 7 long months. I wish we figured this out sooner but I'm so happy to look at his skin now.