Holidaying with Allergies

Travelling with allergies is definitely possible. It is definitely stressful and definitely requires a lot of preparation and organisation, but it is definitely possible.

Travelling with kids however, well that is a different story. We definitely need another holiday to recover from this one!

This is the third time that we have travelled with our allergy babies, and I have to say that the only way of managing it for me, is through the preparation that is done in the run up before we go.

Documentation

One of the first jobs that we do before we go, is to get an updated 'Medical Authorisation for Travel' document from the allergy clinic. This document informs the airline that we need to be carrying certain medication in our hand luggage and that this contains AAIs and liquid over 100ml.

My experience has been absolutely fine getting through security with these items, though the document has always been checked, along with the prescription label (not the actual prescription) against the boys' passports, to ensure that their names all match up.

Any liquids over 100ml have also been sent for testing (takes about two minutes) and we have never had any problems with the Jext Pens, it has been more the quantity of liquid that has caused a hold up.

We have family travel insurance through our bank, though it must be noted that allergies, asthma and eczema are not covered in our package and must be added on as extras. In the past, I have just added them on to our bank insurance and our existing policy but this year realised that we had been paying way over the odds in doing so. This year I used a comparison site and saved us £50!

I also print of translation sheets (as above) and highlight all of the relevant allergies and phrases that we may need. I get these from https://allergyaction.org/translations/.

There are plenty of languages to choose from too!

Food

A couple of days before we are due to leave, I will go and do a bit of a shopping haul, taking along all of the essential foods, or things that I think we may struggle to buy whilst we are away. For us, this is mostly dairy free things such as milk and butter, when we arrive we locate the nearest supermarket and buy in some fresh foods to eat.

We travelled within the EU, this made reading labels much easier, as the laws are the same as in the UK. We would take our translation sheets with us to the supermarket, so that we could cross check anything that we thought was safe.

We chose to go self catering for this holiday and so did most of the cooking ourselves in the apartment. This suited us well this year, as it eliminated the risk that comes with eating out. Also with the boys being so young, going out in the evening wasn't always what they wanted to do.

I cooked all of the boys meals myself, however Laurence and I managed to get a few cheeky takeaways too!

I packed these other bits to use to make fresh ice lollies whilst away and little jelly pouches to keep up their water intake in the heat. The pouches are from @nomnomkids and the lollies are from Amazon.

Travel

Okay, so this bit freaks me out the most. It is extremely stressful travelling with young children anyway, but the thought of long delays, with no access to safe food etc just stresses me out.

Each time we have traveled by plane, I have made up a large batch of pastries to take with us in our hand luggage. This time I did sausage and bean pinwheels. I chose these because they're pretty filling, they're easy to eat and they're really easy to pack too, the boys also love them!

I then fill up a lunchbox with lots of snacks, most of them 'bribe-worthy' for if things start going pear-shaped on the plane. If they get through all of that, or if there are long delays, then our last resort would be packets of ready salted crisps, not the most healthy, but still I had a plan in place!

The first thing that I do once we have boarded the plane, is take out my antibacterial wipes and wipe down all of the tray tables and arm rests, the last thing that we want is a reaction in the air!

This has worked for us each time we have travelled and we haven't run out of food yet!

Reactions

Once we arrive at the resort, I locate the nearest hospital and inform the reps of our allergies and asthma and that we carry Jext Pens.

We have been very lucky on our holidays and only ever had to deal with very minor skin reactions and prickly heat. I think a big contributor to this, is that we don't take risks whilst abroad.

This helps for me to deal with the absolute fear and anxiety that comes hand in hand with going on holiday.

This does however limit some of the things that we do, and we have had to sacrifice those nights that you imagine on holiday, getting all dressed up and going out for a meal. These are choices that we have made, and would rather give those up than not go away at all.

Both our boys are still very young and for now, this suits us and our family. In a few years, the boys might decide that in fact they would actually like to do some of things, and at that time we would reassess and go from there.

We made a decision as a family, that we would not let allergies stop us from doing all of the things that we want to do. Allergies certainly affect the way that we do things, but they haven't stopped us yet!