‘Free-from’ foods shouldn’t be a luxury for children with severe allergies, yet some parents are now forced to cut back on their own meals to provide them
Dialling 999 as my baby’s face swelled to unrecognisable proportions was not how I had hoped our early days of weaning would go. The telltale signs of allergy had plagued my daughter since she was a newborn: the “colic”; the eczema that weeped and crusted despite the cocktail of steroid creams; the hives that erupted at random across her tiny face and eyes. I knew as I mixed peanut butter into her breakfast that morning there was a possibility that things could be about to go sideways. But what I didn’t know was just how much our lives were about to change.
Discovering she was severely allergic to peanuts when she was six months old was just the first piece of the puzzle. By the time she was crawling, we knew she was allergic to dairy, soya, egg, tree nuts, avocado and kiwi, too, along with a handful of other more obscure foods. Those with experience of parenting allergic children will know what I mean when I say it’s almost broken me. The stress is undoubtedly compounded by the financial burden that comes with keeping them safe, which largely goes unrecognised.
Lucy Pasha-Robinson is a writer and commissioning editor
