A Dietary Dilema

Hubby and I made a mistake this weekend: we took the kids out for dinner.  We were at the mall for a birthday party, did a little browsing and then decided to stay for dinner.

We’ve taken our kids out to restaurants and bazillion times.  We’ve gone out to eat at least once a week every week since Doodle was born so it’s not like we aren’t used to being out with the kids.

The mistake we made was not planning ahead to eat out.

We decided to go to an Italian restaurant (the only real restaurant at the mall).  I was mad at first that I didn’t think to bring the coupon we had at home but was able to pull one up on my phone so all was good.

Until we sat down.  Because we hadn’t planned to eat dinner out, I hadn’t brought real food for Doodle, just snacks.  He had missed his afternoon nap because of the birthday party and despite a great morning nap and a ton of snacks during the party, he was a disaster when we sat down and just screamed while I tried to glance over the menu. And that’s when it hit me.

Who takes a kid who can’t have cheese to an Italian restaurant?  Like a flood overcoming me, I welled up with frustration and anger and sorrow for my poor little guy as he screamed with hunger.

I finally calmed him down by nursing him (even though he had just fed at the last store we went to) while I tried to make sense of the menu and pick something for him without a list of ingredients.

I’ve become a champion ingredient reader when giving Doodle food.  He is sensitive to both dairy and corn (and possibly wheat, though the jury is still out on that one).  Dairy is fairly easy to spot: milk, cheese, butter, yogurt.  But corn hides, it’s in everything.  Corn meal, corn starch, corn syrup.  It’s everywhere.

I have two beautiful, healthy girls.  Girls who can (and pretty much do) eat anything.  And I never realized until earlier this year how lucky I am.

I never expected to be “that” mommy.  The one who has to watch everything my kid eats.  Who has to be careful of who I let watch my kid and give a stern disclaimer “he can’t have ANY dairy or anything with corn.  THIS is what he can have.  PLEASE don’t give him anything else!”

I’m lucky because his reactions are limited to diarrhea and severe eczema and (as far as we know) are not life threatening.  He’s not allergic (that we know of) and has never gotten hives or had an anaphylactic reaction.  But he COULD.  I don’t know if someday he WILL and that scares the crap out of me.

So I’m careful.  I read every label.  If it has corn or dairy, I don’t give it to him and I watch that he doesn’t get too much wheat since he’s reacted after having it a few times.

But those three things are in pretty much every food that is sold with a label.  So my kid lives on plain  fruit and veggies (except when he demands cinnamon) and meat and eggs.  And it’s fine, except when we go out.

I don’t always have stuff “ready to serve” for him and I’ve learned (the hard way) that I can’t rely on restaurants having food for him.

He’s big enough to have pretty much anything and by this age both my girls were eating pretty much anything and everything (with the exception of nuts and shellfish).

But my little guy can not have macaroni and cheese or grilled cheese or pizza or tomato soup or chicken nuggets or a cheeseburger or a ham and cheese sandwich or a taco. My kid may never get to eat a real taco!

I’ve learned to feed him.  I’ve learned to make things from scratch and work the recipes to get him as much as possible and adding all the “bad” stuff last.  I’ve learned to serve him deconstructed meals in order to keep him away from the “danger” foods.

But it’s exhausting.  Some days I just wander from the fridge to the freezer to the pantry and back again, making circles trying to find ANYTHING he can have that doesn’t take a lot of prep and that isn’t snacks (puffs, melts, chips, crackers, etc.), usually while he screams.

Some days I just want to give in and throw him a piece of cheese or one of a million other items I have that are laced with corn products.  But I don’t want to deal with the after effects, I certainly don’t want to cause him any discomfort but mostly I don’t want to risk a worse reaction.

I’m officially one of “those” mommies, a mommy of a child with REAL food restrictions and to be brutally honest, it sucks!