Sunday, January 24, 2010

Open Sesame: Mystery Solved?

Just up High Street from us is a lovely Middle Eastern cafe. We love it and in late pregnancy and throughout our hectic summer, we ate there at least once a week. I have jumped around the menu, but I usually return to the lamb kabob sandwich wrapped in lavash bread. The lamb is a nice treat and the tahini sauce makes the whole thing a messy and delightful lunch or dinner. Most often we would also get a side of hummus and pita with our meals. The hummus is so good...creamy and mellow with all the favors harmoniously blended together. I could and would eat it by the spoonful.
Yesterday we took a family walk up to the cafe and as were happily eating our sandwiches, Milo was contentedly munching on little pieces of pita dipped in hummus. I noticed his face was getting red, so we offered some water and he went back to eating his lunch. The next time I glanced at him, his face was even more red and blotchy. I rinsed his face off with a wet napkin and noticed some hives appearing around his mouth, on his neck and on his hands. We quickly decided to wrap up lunch and walk back home. By the time we had Milo back in the stroller and out of the restaurant, the lower half of his face was a mass of hives and was swelling. Other than being itchy, it didn't seem to bother him.

After checking with our pediatrician, we gave him a dose of Benadryl, the swelling subsided and he was back to his smiley self. I have never seen an allergic reaction to food, so watching one happen so quickly to my own baby was a tad upsetting.

I'm glad he was eating something with so few ingredients in it when the reaction happened...hummus is a made up of chick peas, garlic, lemon, olive oil and tahini (sesame paste). I'm pretty sure he was reacting to the sesame, since he has had the other ingredients with no problems.

Once the immediate concern was taken care of, I've thought of my eating habits over the last 10 months and realized that while I have at different times cut out eggs, nuts, dairy and gluten, I never cut out sesame. So the hummus I eat weekly, the Kashi cereal I often have in the mornings, the sesame coated nuts I snack on, the everything bagels I sometimes have on the weekends...all of these things have been sensitizing him.

I'm hoping the sesame is it and once that clears both of our systems, we'll have taken care of the allergy mystery. At least we know for sure sesame is off the list.

1 comment:

Sara said...

That is exactly what Allie's face looked like when she initially reacted to eggs. Scary - but at least Benadryl does the trick!