FOOD ALLERGIES… STORY By Kathryn Calvert A HORROR My daughter was three minutes old, perfectly formed but covered in angry red blotches on her skin. She gazed up at me and the surgeon who’d performed the caesarean with calm and clear blue eyes, as if absolutely nothing was wrong. On his rounds the next day, the surgeon looked at her with a furrowed brow. “I haven’t seen a baby born with eczema like this before,” he said. "You’re going to have to be very careful with this child.” More than 18 years later, I almost laugh at how little notice I took of his forewarning that day. Compared with my two sons born before her, my daughter was a little angel. The blotches on her skin would fade, I decided, just like the milk spots and dry skin her brothers had. I really didn’t give his words another thought. Until four months later, in my mother-inlaw’s kitchen, when my daughter spat out the Farex we’d been trying to coax into her and the mixture burnt through the fine skin layers of her face. It was the beginning of an often horrific rollercoaster ride through food allergies and anaphylaxis that we hadn’t even known existed. Our beautiful daughter, just under six pounds and swimming in clothing for a newborn, reacted without warning to everyday foods we all love and enjoy. But to understand the background, let’s rewind to the start of our story. I was five months’ pregnant when scans showed my daughter wasn’t growing as quickly as was normal. From that time on, she was scanned every week, and was always on the lowest percentile for measurement. When she was born two weeks before her due date, she was tiny but okay. I didn’t care that she had eczema… I was just happy she was out and breathing. For four months we battled with her skin…special potions and lotions, homemade soap, antibiotics for infected skin, multiple tepid baths a day, wrapping at night, imported water taken from a French spring that soothed irritated skin, scores of doctors’ appointments. She itched and squirmed and tore at her skin in her cot, and the only way I could keep her asleep and not bleeding was to let her rub my largest left-hand knuckle with one tiny finger. Not the right hand, not the smaller knuckles…it was just that one she preferred. Nearly 20 years later, I still have a strange round pattern on that hand. 12 JUNE 2016
1-48 FT June16
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