Oh, fall.

I've always loved fall. Fall is my favorite season. It's not too hot, or too cold, but I can still wear big floppy sweaters and hats and eat everything in sight. This year though... This year I'm nervous about fall. Why be nervous about a season? I know, it sounds stupid.

But who wants to guess how many things have nutmeg in them? Anyone? I'll give you a hint. It's basically everything, at least in fall. Anything pumpkin flavored, everything at Thanksgiving... Too much stuff to name. I love all of this stuff. Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies may literally be my favorite thing in the food world. I can eat my weight in food at Thanksgiving. Except not this year. This year, I can't eat anything that could've come close to nutmeg. Why?

My kid is allergic. My one year old is so allergic to nutmeg that after one reaction, his pediatrician prescribed him an epipen that I have to have with me at all times. My child could come into contact with nutmeg, go into anaphylactic shock, and possibly die. Isn't that terrifying?

The season I used to so love has become a season of terror. Did you know that companies don't even have to list nutmeg as an ingredient? It's just written as "spices" in the ingredient list because it's generally a smorgasbord of different spices. But it's always nutmeg. It's such a small amount that it's inconsequential to everyone else. Not to me though. That small amount makes the difference between breathing and not. Literally between life and death.

It's been about a month since I discovered the allergy. I decided to make bubba a breakfast that I saw on Pinterest. You fry bananas on the stove and sprinkle a mixture of sugar, cinnamon, and a pinch of nutmeg on top. Within seconds of him eating it, he had a rash everywhere it had touched. I figured it was just a contact allergy, that he would outgrow it. That happened with garlic when he was little. But no. I continued our day as normal, but by the time we got to school, my son was covered in hives. I was terrified. I have no experience with food allergies. I just wanted to cry. I still want to cry every time I think about it.

So now I have to be vigilant. I can't let him eat anything at all that has not been thoroughly inspected by me personally. I've learned how to read labels. I've tried to do research on nutmeg allergies but everything I can find just says "an allergy to nutmeg is extremely rare". Well, that doesn't help me at all. That doesn't help anyone. So I've decided to.

This blog is an outlet for many things. I will always preach support for sufferers of mental illness, of eating disorders. I will always support single parents. And now, I hope to show people who have, or whose children have, rare food allergies that they are not alone. We all deserve support. We all deserve to be taken seriously. And damn it, we deserve for food to have to be labeled with EVERY ingredient. That's what I'm here for.

Let me know in the comments if you or someone you know has a "weird" allergy. I would love to hear about it and learn more about it.