Food restrictions and food allergies during the pandemic

As we are going into our fifth week of social distancing we are starting to get into a rhythm. We have virtual schooling, messaging and video calling friends, lots of outside time when the weather is favorable. Yet our meals have been mostly normal except our poor Cecelia had a nasty accident on the school playground right before schools were shut down. This has made for quite the adventure with foods that she can now eat!

Long story short, regarding the incident, she ended up with stitches in her bottom lip and her two front top permanent teeth sustained some hairline fractures, shifting, and chipping.

Due to this she has been on a mostly soft food diet. This can throw anyone into a bit of turmoil but add food allergies and a pandemic this just turned our world upside down.

We are grateful that Cecelia only has a few allergies but seems to have quite a few food aversions… She is only allergic to peanuts, walnuts and pecans. But she does not like milk or yogurt and has a strong dislike for many soft foods. So what do you feed a kid with food allergies that won’t look at macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, or oatmeal during a pandemic with limited selections in the grocery store? Well we have found at the beginning was the most grueling. We did lots of jello, pudding, soft scrambled cheesy eggs, Pediasure shakes, chicken soup with bite size pieces and even found a smoothie combination she enjoyed using OWYN protein while hiding some yogurt and fruits.

She was on these foods for almost a full three weeks. This seemed to be things we didn’t have too much trouble finding except eggs. Eggs have been very hit or miss with most of the grocery stores we frequent. The jello and puddings we found and loaded up right before social distancing was required. Even when most people were hoarding canned and dried foods along with toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and bleach there were still safe yogurts, ready to eat pudding and jello readily available.

Just recently she has been given the OK to eat foods she can chew but still not allowed to bite with her front teeth. This has opened up a lot more foods that she actually enjoys rather than tolerates such as lightly grilled cheese sandwiches, cheeseburgers, steamed vegetables, even steak!

As long as we can cut these into tiny pieces she is allowed to eat them using a small spoon or fork. She even was able to have an apple for the first time today.

It’s like feeding a one year old over again with the tiny pieces we have to cut but the longer she keeps her front teeth from being used the better shape she will be in the long run.

Most of the foods have been again either easy to find in the grocery store or the shelves are completely empty. Breads that are safe we are lucky most people are not hoarding so we have been able to buy and freeze a few loaves to use when she requests them. Fresh fruits and vegetables have been the hardest to find and thankfully she likes a wide variety of those. She has been known to ask for another helping of asparagus and brussel sprouts! As long as it has Parmesan cheese sprinkled on it she will eat it.

We still have a long road ahead of us regarding her teeth, but as we all like to say, kids always like to throw a wrench into the works to keep us on our toes and my Cecelia seems to have plenty of wrenches for us!