Raising Twins With Allergies

My twin girls are four and half years old and it has been a unique and tiring four and half years. I knew it would be hard having twins but I didn't realize how hard especially seeing one of them is severely allergic to peanuts, she is also allergic to tree nuts, soy, egg, dust mites, cockroaches, birch, oak and seasonal allergies, so we were told.
Along with her allergies she has asthma caused by her allergies.

The other one, the oldest, we were also told has allergies to dust mites and seasonal allergies, along with the asthma.
I believe, Alison, the youngest was allergic while in the womb.

My husband and I went out to eat for Valentines Day while I was pregnant to the Texas Roadhouse.
Around 1 A.

M. I got violently ill I thought I was losing the babies. When I called my Ob the doctor on call told me its food poisoning call your primary and hung up. Well, I didn't because it stopped and I knew it wasn't food poisoning.

I never thought about it again until I found out Alison was allergic to peanuts when she was 14 months old.

We spent months running to the doctors with her from the time she was 6 months old until she was diagnosed.
They checked her several times for milk and soy allergies but nothing else. Babies don't eat nuts! But, their father's do! My husband would eat peanuts like they were going out of style.

Jay would take a handful of nuts as he walked into the house and go and kiss Cali and Alison. Alison would immediately breakout in hives and made this awful noise as if she was gasping for air. It wasn't until my doctor's father who was in practice with him heard her on the phone had me rush her in that's when we found out it was allergies before that they kept telling me it was a prickly heat rash.

The father diagnosed it as allergies and sent us for tests and to the allergist.
While we were waiting for our appointment day to come I started noticing what was happening with Jay eating nuts, I was already recording everything I gave Alison to eat.

When the appointment day finally came I told the doctor what happened the only rast test that was done was peanuts.

Within minutes it started turning positive. When the 15 minutes past the nurse came in looked at it and said she was allergic big time. They showed us how to use an epipen and sent us on our way.

Less than a year later we found out she had additional allergies, I read all the books I could about the peanut allergies in the mean time. My favorites being Alison the Elephant is Allergic to Peanuts, Pete's Allergic to Peanuts and the Peanut Allergy Handbook.
The girls love the first two books and know Alison's allergic.
She made the decision herself to stop taking off her Medic Alert Bracelet last year.
I would take it off each night and one night she told me I couldn't take it off of her.

It hasn't been off since.
Cali will actually recite the list of Alison's allergies. Cali knows she might have seasonal allergies but watches everything for her sister.

The hardest allergy to watch for is Soy with all the different forms of Soy it is hard to know which are safe for her and which are not. Eventually, we changed allergy doctors and found out it was only soy flour she needed to stay away from. In watching all the food for Alison I have stopped watching the food for my husband and myself.
Being a Weight Watchers Lifetime member I have been watching my intake very carefully for 9 years.

I stopped that last year because I couldn't check ingredients for Alison and calories for myself and get through the store in decent time.

My children come first, as with most mothers.
I have to tell any parent that is wondering what is going on with their child be persistent with doctors. My daughters are on their 5th primary care doctor.

o The first my husband wasn't crazy about.
o The next I wasn't.

o Doctor number three we loved but he didn't believe us about what was going on with the girls and discarded our concerns.

o Number four helped with some things but not the allergies he treated us like he could care less about our children and we were just pains in the neck. o Doctor number five we absolutely love! Our daughters love him! He cares and he found allergies, he found asthma.

He didn't ignore our concerns he's always been there.
When I thanked him for caring his only response is that's what I'm here for. If you have a concern about your children find a doctor who you can talk to, one who is going to sit up and take notice. One who cares! Keep track of anything that is out of the ordinary make lists of all they do, eat, what ever is concerning make lists of everything that has to do with it.
I've made lists after lists about things for the girls some of the doctors paid attention others didn't.
We made lists of when they received their bottles, how much they drank, peed and pooped.

If they paid attention to the list they would have realized Alison had allergies earlier than they did.
Two signs of allergies, constipation and eczema Alison had them both, not to mention fussy eaters.

(When Alison got older she refused to eat certain foods.

I later found out there was an ingredient in them that she was allergic to.
) I was always proud that she would rather have fruit than a sweet. I would make cookies and cakes and she wouldn't eat them.
.

.
because of the egg, she was allergic to it.
We didn't know but she knew she didn't want to touch it for some reason.
Eventually, it was 50-50 whether she would eat the sweet because I started using Greek Yogurt instead of eggs.

I put a little more than 1 tbsp of yogurt per egg. Some people use bananas, some applesauce, I've used Buttermilk in some of the foods.

I know there is a flour, baking soda or powder and water mix you can do but I could never remember it.

A great book for this allergy is Baking without Eggs.

It has a recipe in it for Chocolate Cake everyone loves.
My hat is off to the author! I kept Alison away from eggs for a year she out grew that allergy.

It was so worth the time it took to make changes in our life to help her. I have to give doctor #4 credit he did put Alison in speech therapy when I was concerned about her not really talking and she was almost 2.
Now there are days I say please stop talking.
But, I'm so glad she doesn't.
Doctor #3 wouldn't do anything about her speech when I asked about it.
He said give her another year to learn to talk.
I couldn't do that what if there was a problem that's why we finally left him.

I'm so glad I did.
She didn't talk because her sister was a jabber mouth.

It's hard having twins! It's hard have twins with allergies and asthma! Some days we were eating and eating just to get energy because we were up all night because of their asthma.

But, I'm so glad I am persistent and do keep records of anything that concerns me.
It's the only way to get answers when your child is out of the ordinary and has peanut reactions when she is kissed by someone who just ate peanuts at 6 months old.
As for the Asthma both girls are out growing it.
It's been almost a year since we have used a nebulizer I just hope I never have to take it out of the closet again.
If you have a question or want to get in touch because you have the same issues I'd love to hear from you.

It's a small world that people don't understand when they don't have to deal with it. You can contact me at: http://www.
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