So, my baby daughter is part of the CHILD study taking place at the UofA. You can read bout it here: http://www.canadianchildstudy.ca/overview.html. I highly recommend anyone who is expecting to get involved with this. It is a great opportunity to help with research in this much needed area.
Anyways, as part of the study, at one year, we got to go in and have allergy testing done (skin prick tests) for both me and my babe, and do some developmental testing for her, as well as spirometry test for me.
Well, the first thing I was told was that even if it is itchy, I was not to scratch for 20 min.
Has anyone had any of these done?
Itchy does not describe the level of what I went through. More like along the lines of ‘if you feel like you need to tear your skin off’. Wowzers! Of the 19 pricks, I reacted to 11. 4 quite intensely. It was crazy.
For those of you that know me, I sometimes am… reluctant about spending lots of time outdoors. I have a weird, irrational fear of bees and wasps (although I have been working very hard to face it). So, I tend towards indoor activities a lot. What does that have to do with the test? Well, the most severe reactions I had were for trees, grass, and weeds. Seems like the outdoors are aggressively and actively attacking me. Hmm. Interesting.
Which leads me to my thought of the day about irrational fears.
My mother-in-law once told me to pray for God to take away my fear and he would. I have, He hasn’t. I am not sure it is going to work that way for me. I have an awful uneasiness that I will pass this onto my kids too. I try very hard to hide it from them, but (I’m not going to lie) there are times when a bee buzzing has brought me to tears. I had a hard time even working on my daughter’s school report on wasps because the pictures were freaking me out. I have managed, for the most part, to conquer my fears of spiders, but the flying bug thing I have a long way to go. I once (to my own embarrassment) freaked out when a bee came near my baby carriage and ran and cried. Who does that??? I am trying very hard to defeat this irrationality. I *know* it is not a reasonable fear. I just have not gotten to that place yet. I think I have gotten to the point I probably wouldn’t abandon my baby to fend for themselves ever again, but not much further than that. It affects my life, it is embarrassing, and I just plain don’t like it.
If anyone has tips on this, please let me know! I wonder if there is a patron saint of bees… or fears of bees?
In the meantime, I think that science has now given me legitimate reason to spend extra time indoors. (Oh, and I have a really funny fear of spiders story too that I should share someday… involves me, 8 months pregnant, standing in the ditch on a highway.)
Catholic Momma 