Gina Clowes of AllergyMoms.com: My Story

When my husband and I decided to have kids, I knew I would go back to work. I was one of those women who sneered at stay-home moms because "Motherhood is a relationship, not a career!"

I did end up going back after my first son was born, albeit part-time. I had a terrific job, an adorable son, excellent childcare (Grandma) and a meticulously clean house. After a few years, my husband and I felt another child would complete our family. Since moms are often more relaxed and experience the second time around, I looked forward to an easy time where I'd do an even better job as a parent now that I knew the ropes. I'm sure that somebody up there somewhere got a chuckle out of our assumption that we could improve on the perfection of the first.

After my second son was born, the option of returning to work immediately evaporated, and so did the option of sleeping more than three consecutive hours. My newborn son - who was supposed to be the "easy" one -- was covered with head-to-toe hives on his second day of life and those hives stayed with him for years. The pediatrician joked that he had a "face that only a mother could love." When we brought him home from the hospital, he also had terrible acid reflux and we could not lay him down for fear that he would choke on his vomit. It was frightening, and there was no parenting book or motherly advice that was going to make it go away.  We changed his diaper for 2 ½ years with his head propped up on pillows.

His first year of life was a whirlwind of acid reflux, eczema, hives, ear infections and lack of sleep. The pediatrician said he'd grow out of the acid reflux. She told me to count how many times he spit up in a day.  I stopped counting after eight times in 30 minutes. For his first 15 months, I slept sitting against the headboard of my bed with my son lying face down on my chest.

Confirming a Food Allergy Diagnosis

Every chance I got, I'd jump online to earn a few more credits toward my Google MD. I learned words like atopic dermatitis and urticaria and immunoglobulin E (IgE).  After discussing this with my real doctor, she suggested I avoid dairy, then soy, then egg, then wheat, but still things were not better. Of course I was eating peanut butter rice cakes and munching on pistachios for protein. We did allergy skin testing and it was negative. (I later learned that infant skin sometimes does not contain enough mast cells to show a reaction.) 

After numerous doctor appointments and conflicting diagnoses, we packed up our family and drove nine hours to New York City to the Jaffe Food Allergy Clinic at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.  There, we were able to see one of the leading pediatric allergists in the country. I was hoping he would tell me I was just an anxious mom.  But instead he confirmed that our son had over a dozen food allergies, some life threatening. He told us our son should never be without epinephrine.