When my daughter was about 9 months, her preschool teacher called to let me know she was fussy and was tugging on her ears. I recommended some Tylenol since it sounded like an oncoming ear infection. Five minutes later she called and said my daughter’s face was swelling and they had to call 911. This obviously was very terrifying. I worked about 25 minutes away, so called my husband who worked locally to head that way. Luckily, our daughter was breathing fine. We took her to urgent care and gave her benadryl which helped with the swelling and itching. We believe she ate eggs for the first time that morning. This prompted allergy testing where we found out she was allergic to peanut, tree nuts, eggs, sesame. We later found out she has an allergy to green peas. She can now have baked egg. We think we will be able to challenge egg and sesame soon. We use epinephrine and benadryl as needed.
At first, we relied on our allergist and pediatrician for resources. When she was younger, I used relevant FB groups to see how other parents navigated certain situations. I’ve used the Food Allergy Fund and FARE as a resource.