Food Allergy
JaneW2
member
Food allergies worse in pregnancy? How to stay nourished?
JaneW2
member
in Food Allergy
I'm currently 17 weeks pregnant, and I've lived with moderately severe allergies and mild asthma for years. Prior to this, the only food issues were eggplant and an exotic shellfish called the razor clam, plus mild oral reactions to cantaloupe and strawberries. I never had an anaphylactic reaction, and those foods aren't terribly hard to avoid.
Since I got pregnant, however, the oral allergy syndrome has exploded. I now seem to react to pretty much every edible plant on the planet, unless it is completely cooked. Some of my favorites, I'm so sensitive now that just cutting them up for dinner makes me itch. Again, no anaphylaxis, but itching throat, hives around the mouth and sometimes down my neck or even elsewhere, sinus issues, sometimes asthma flare-up. Definitely bad enough to make me regret eating it!
Of course, I'm hungry all the time, and craving everything. The fruit bowl at a work meeting this week almost made me cry, because it looked like heaven but I knew I couldn't even sit near it.
How do you deal with this stuff? I've been leaning heavily on canned fruits and veggies (the low sugar and salt-free kinds of course), just because I know they are safe, but that's not optimal. I can eat baby food, but that's a really expensive way to fill a grown person's stomach. I could cook my own stuff more, but then I'd have to be exposed to it while cooking. Plus, my attempts at cooked fruit have really not turned out well!
Any good recipes? Tricks to stay nourished? Are there any veggies that DON'T trigger oral allergy syndrome? And how do you eat in public with such a crazy list of restrictions?
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