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Where Should I First Give Peanut Butter to My Child?

Where Did You First Introduce Peanut Butter?

The day you start introducing solids into your babe's diet is an exciting one, that is, until you are faced with the decision on when (and where) to allow your precious child to ingest a potentially life-threatening and toxic substance: peanut butter. To everyone else, it's just peanut butter. To me, a new mom, the pediatrician might as well have told me that it was OK to give my child a smidgen of arsenic.

Knowing nothing about food allergies, I was a wreck about dishing out the spread to my daughter. The only way I was going to feel comfortable giving my firstborn child peanut butter was if I did so within sprinting distance of a trained professional. So a few weeks after her second birthday, I drove us and a jar of Skippy to the doctor's office. Right there in the parking lot is where I hesitantly gave her a tiny taste (which she hated, by the way). Then we waited. And waited. Thirty minutes feels like an eternity when you are in a car with a 2-year-old — particularly if you're interrupting her Dora-induced trance to check vital signs. The truth is I had no idea what I was waiting for, but the idea of having doctors close by eased my new mamma jitters.

It makes me laugh now, especially because I followed the exact same protocol with my second-born, who is now severely allergic to another food that I gave him without even thinking about it. I can't be the only one who planned the exact time and place I would give my children peanut butter. What about you?

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