Cottage Cheese and Mother's Intuition

Micah woke up from his afternoon nap earier today and I plopped him immediately down in his high chair for lunch (If you interrupt his play to put him in his highchair he puts up quite a fight, so I've found it easier to take him straight from crib to chair). At my last trip to the grocery store I'd bought some baby crackers and cottage cheese for him to try. I chose to give him the cheese today. Cottage cheese is on the list as an acceptable item for babies as young as 6 months. But, I'm so glad I waited a month and half, because he had an awful reaction to it!

I always start slowly with a new food, so after Micah had eaten peas and carrots, I gave him 4-5 spoons of small curd cottage cheese. He loved it! I'm always happy when he likes a new food- especially one that involves no preparation. But, instead of feeling happy I imediately had a weird thought. "He likes this so much, it would be awful if he had an allergic reaction to it." I should have stopped right there. I know this was my instinct kicking in, but at the time I didn't give it a second thought.

I took him out of his chair, put him on the floor, went to get me a hat so we could go outside and play and in those 30 seconds, his face went from normal to this...(I took pics while waiting for a call back from the pediatrician. I wanted to document it to be able to evaluate later if it was getting worse.)



It freaked me out, but I knew what it was right away. I was pretty worried and eerily, my first thought was to make a mental note of where our closest ER is. One call from the pediatrician calmed me down. Before I could even get to Walgreens to buy the recommended Benadryl, his face was already getting better. Thank God I'd only given him a few bites! The Dr. said he'd be fine, but to watch him for uneasy breathing...and to avoid cottage cheese!

I'd had a pretty nasty run in with food allergies with a 6 month old once that involved projectile vomiting. SO glad this wasn't so bad.

Micah didn't act like it bothered him, just rubbed his eye a lot. But, I still felt so bad for him that I indulged him and let him watch his Momma and Me video. (He loves that video, and we don't let him watch it very often.) Seeing him all rashy like that was awful. If he'd been old enough, I'm sure he would have gotten a big bowl of ice cream and a special trip to Chucky Cheese!
And I can't end the blog with him looking like this. So, just for kicks, here's a better pic of the baby bear.