uh-oh - I eat peanut butter almost every day

[Glamourcide]

^ Agree!!

FWIW I ate crunchy peanut butter slathered about two inches thick on a piece of toast EVERY single morning during my first pregnancy, because that, a piece of toast with butter & Vegemite (also slathered two inches thick) and a huge glass of long-life milk (had to be long-life, 'fresh' just didn't hit the spot) was the ONLY thing that stopped me spewing my guts up until 2pm. Every day. Without fail.

I then got told by a midwife that I shouldn't be eating nut products or strawberries during pg as 'the baby might be allergic and if so, you'll end up having a stillborn'. Hey, cheers, way to reassure a paranoid first-time mother!

And for the record, my very healthy now-3yo LOVES peanut butter and all other types of nuts (and about every other potential allergen under the sun) and is perfectly fine. I never held off giving her anything, in fact I probably introduced potential allergens (egg, dairy, nuts, shellfish etc) much earlier than the current recommendations. Meh. Hospital's a couple of minutes away, I've seen my mum have a reaction to nuts so I know what to look for. No worries here

[~Kim~]

It is hard isn't it, and even harder when info is so freely available.
There is conflicting evidence for both sides.
It's up to common sense IMO.
With DD I didn't find out that piece of info until she was 6mo. I had eaten it the entire time and while I was BF. She had no issues and loves peanuts.
WIth DS I figured DD was fine so so would he and continued on my merry way. Now everytime he goes near a peanut he gets spots around his mouth, so I'm not risking anything until we can find out for sure (a bit harder where we live). I have also stopped eating them as he is still BF.

[Ambah]

This debate has been raging on for ages, & I don't think there's conclusive evidence on either side.

I disagree though that you should only be cautious if there's a history of allergy in your family. My family has no history of allergies at all, yet my DS developed a strong peanut allergy when he was a toddler, and yes I ate peanuts during my pg with him.
But it's impossible to know isn't it...
For the record I did avoid peanuts when pg and BF my DD, beause of DS's history, and so far she's shown no signs, but I haven't exposed her to whole peanuts or peanut butter yet.
In hindsight, if me not eating peanuts during pg could have prevented DS's potentially life threatening allergy, then I simply wouldn't have eaten them.
Also something to bear in mind is that the rate of peanut allergy in kids is increasing all the time. What our mothers ate when they were pg with us is not necessarily the same as what we eat today, given our exposure to chemicals, processing etc etc to our foods - which would not have been as prevalent 20+ years ago...
But I agree it's confusing, and inconclusive!

[Taurean]

My two cents - what a load of crap! You'll be fine hon! I have quite severe allergies (highly allergic to dust mites and grass) and I went through intensive treatement over two years to desensitise me to my allergens and you know what the specialists do? They inject you with what ever you're allergic to! So, based on that, my theory is that you're better off subjecting your unborn child to nuts, eggs, etc in order to desensitise them.

I'm no scientist but at the end of the day, I just chose to go with the flow while pregnant. There is always another study, always a new rule to abide by. If we listened to everything the 'experts' said, we wouldn't eat or drink anything!!

Relax and enjoy your pregnancy!

[Taurean]

Ok this is my personal opinion:

The reason kids these days have so many allergies is because we as pg women keep getting told: "don't eat this, it's bad for your baby"... Our parents generation had no idea about half the stuff we are aware of these days and if I think about it, how many kids my age (24) have a severe allergy to peanuts?? Barely any!! Our parents ate peanuts and other nuts the whole way through their pg's with us and we are fine.
I am not stopping from eating peanut butter because I think personally it is silly and not eating it means that no tollerance is built up and they will have more chance of being allergic!! Well that's my thinking...

I'd say go for gold with your peanut butter on toast!!!! Eat it as much as you want because our parents did and we are fine...

And I totally agree with this!! When I was at school, nut allergies were so rare!! Now, it's so common that most schools are 'nut free'. No offence to those parents with children with nut allegies, but seriously WTF?! That just wasn't an issue when I was young!! I think all these studies are causing more allergies than preventing them.

[Kazbah]

Great. I now have a craving for celery with peanut butter.

[Ambah]

And I totally agree with this!! When I was at school, nut allergies were so rare!! Now, it's so common that most schools are 'nut free'. No offence to those parents with children with nut allegies, but seriously WTF?! That just wasn't an issue when I was young!! I think all these studies are causing more allergies than preventing them.

Sorry but I tend to disagree. Something is causing the nut allergies, and I doubt it can be blamed on abstinence from nuts in pregnancy? As we were only advised to be abstinent after the nut allegies increased by so much...
Look at the difference in food products that are consumed these days as opposed to what our parents ate. Soo many foods are laced with nuts or may contain traces. There's a theory that the western world is becoming so allergic to nuts because of the way they are processed in our foods, and then recognized by our immune systems as intruders- hence building up an allergic response. Interestingly other societies don't suffer peanut allergies anything like western society- possibly due to their use of the food being entirely different & not processed, etc.

Wrt to the 'nut free zones' at schools, did you know some children can go into anaphylactic shock and die if they even smell or touch a single microscopic nut particle? I can entirely understand and support why there would be nut free zones. I can't see how the nut free zones are contributing to allergies? We're not talking about a minor inconvenience that kids can't take peanut butter sandwiches to school. We're talking about the fact that other children can, and have died because of peanut butter sandwiches. And sure it was unheard of when we were kids ourselves, but things have changed, and sadly I doubt it will ever revert back to our childhood peanut freedom again?

I remember reading an article very recently which disputes the delaying of nut exposure- & suggests that exposing kids to potential allergens earlier in life rather than later may actually improve allergy outcomes, but they excluded pregnacy from their recommendations. So the info out there is just ridiculously conflicting.
It's obvious that even the most highly skilled immunologists don't have all the answers, which doesn't help any of us here!
But my personal choice would be to err on the side of caution. I don't think it's true that in pg we are told we aren't allowed to do/eat anything. Peanuts and listeria are the only things I remember being cautioned about...

[Taurean]

Wrt to the 'nut free zones' at schools, did you know some children can go into anaphylactic shock and die if they even smell or touch a single microscopic nut particle? I can entirely understand and support why there would be nut free zones. I can't see how the nut free zones are contributing to allergies? We're not talking about a minor inconvenience that kids can't take peanut butter sandwiches to school. We're talking about the fact that other children can, and have died because of peanut butter sandwiches. And sure it was unheard of when we were kids ourselves, but things have changed, and sadly I doubt it will ever revert back to our childhood peanut freedom again?

Yes, very much aware of that hence my comment 'no offence to those parents with children with allergies'. I didn't mention once that it was an inconvenience that schools, day care centres, etc are now 'nut free', merely that it is 'strange' given the childhood I had. It just wasn't an issue so what has changed? You may be right, maybe it is that we now live on more processed foods than we once used to but in saying that, I remember nuts being a lot more readily availalble and affordable when I was a child and I would have thought that the 'pure' form of nut would have been more of an issue than the nuts traces in processed foods. But as I said, I'm no expert and simply sharing my thoughts.

As I said in one of my previous posts, I still find it odd that pregnant women are now cautioned against eating nuts (and I must state that I wasn't though and I was pregnant for most of 2009) given that one of the ways to treat allergies is to subject the patient to the thing they're actually allergic to. I was highly allergic to both dust mites and grass and was treated by an allergy specialists at one of Perth's leading hospitals for over two years. I was given weekly injections, one in each arm, of the allergens - pure allergenes - and the dose was gradually increased until I no longer reacted to either. The change in me was remarkable.

Given what I've just said, I'd like to say how much respect I have for allergy sufferers or those caring for allergy sufferers. It's horrendous and I'm grateful that my allergies were/are not life threatening, just awfully debilitating at times.

I forgot to mention, one of my best friends in high school had a severe peanut allergy and still does. Nuts weren't banned at our school. I'm not saying it's not necessary now but I do question why or how it is so much worse these days, IYKWIM

[M D]

I read a similar article when I was pg with my DD all it did was make me eat peanut butter. Never ate the stuff again until this pg and I have it all the time on toast. DD has no issues eating it.
Each to there own but it's not 'advice' I have followed but we also do t have any history of allergies.

[Lisa B]

Oh gosh, now I'm a bit worried. I'm vegetarian and I've been eating a handful of mixed nuts on most days for protein and most of the nuts are peanuts in the mix. Perhaps I should switch to some other nuts. I'm already coeliac and have a risk of passing that one onto my bub.

[sasha]

FWIW, I was listening to something on the radio while pregnant with one of the other two, and it was talking about how smoking (I think) when pregnant could affect the child of the foetus.... ie the pregnant woman's grandchild. Of course I'm not saying smoking is advisable, all I'm saying is: sometimes more knowledge is not helpful - even if you do all the 'right' things (and remember, that changes all the time!!), it might be something your mother did which will affect your baby, nothing you can do about that! AARGH! Best not to reproduce at all, I think, and shut yourself in a cupboard.

As others have pointed out, there are so many variables, and you just don't know what is going to happen once your baby is on the outside. We all worry about our children having a life-threatening allergy or illness, but as others have pointed out, even within the same family where there are histories of allergies, some have them and some don't. My cousin's wife is allergic to nuts but her son is fine - and obviously she didn't have any during her pregnancy. It's all a bit of a lottery...

[luna moth]

On that - DH's gastroenterologist has said there's interesting stuff coming out about nut allergies (and coeliac disease and other IBDs) that suggests that the same part of the immune system that causes them is the one that used to deal with intestinal parasites like worms and nasty bacteria. Because of our love affair with triclosan and other antibacterials, these have been wiped out, but that part of the immune system remains. It's effectively sitting around bored, so starts to attack what it decides are foreign proteins, and this frequently happens to be nuts, eggs and shellfish. And THAT'S why it didn't occur in our generations - we weren't as obsessively clean.

[Little Chicken]

Ok, this is my own personal theory. I have no research to back this up....

I don't think it is exposure to peanuts themselves that initially cause the allergy, but to something that is very similar to peanuts, like a chemical or a virus or bacteria that has a protein on it that is similar to peanuts. After all, that is theory behind how some auto-immune disorders, including diabetes, are caused. If it was just to the nut then why are peanut allergies in african tribes where peanuts are a staple part of the diet, rare? It might explain the rise in allergies since our diet became very processed.

Now for my rant....

We haven't changed very much since the middle ages when mothers were blamed for everything that went wrong during pregnancy (including giving birth to girls!) Except then it was blamed on bad spirits, thoughts, and imbalance of humours. Now it is because our diets are wrong. If your child is obese, it's your fault. If your child, grandchildren, great grandchildren have high blood pressure, it's your fault. If they have diabetes, your fault again. And allergies??? Absolutely your fault. I think we have to realise, as a society, that some things we just can't control, and nature controls everything eventually.