Peanuts

A few weeks before the babies first birthday I did something dumb. I decided that they were close enough to one to have a taste of peanut butter. But I didn't limit it to a taste: I gave them each a piece of toast with peanut butter slathered on it. They LOVED it!

Fairly quickly in, Mattias started rubbing his eyes and complaining a lot. But he kept eating. He hadn't napped well that day, so I assumed he was just tired and ready for an early trip to bed. When he was about half done, I clued in that, no, the whining and complaining and the face rubbing were not due to lack of sleep. His face was getting puffy and it was super red. He was having an allergic reaction to the peanut butter!

I got the Children's Benadryl and Jon got him out of his seat and took him upstairs to wash him down. He was quite a sight. But the Benadryl kicked in pretty fast (I'm so glad we had it on hand!) and he calmed down fairly quickly. I wanted to share a picture of him while he is still looking yucky but not at his worst. Poor guy!

It turns out that here they generally don't offer peanut products to kids under 5. I asked the paediatrician about it and he said it is due in part to cultural tendencies. Peanut butter just doesn't have the following here that it has in North America (here they seem to go for Nutella over PB). Take those two factors into consideration: late introduction of peanuts and general disinterest in peanut butter, and I guess that's why there is such a low number of kids with peanut allergies! There is not a single child in Elijah and Brady's entire school with a peanut allergy!

So my advice, should you ever have a baby in your midst: don't bother with peanut butter for at least a few years.