Living with Food Allergies : Travel!

Hubby and I love to travel, so we started Peanut traveling at a young age too (2 months old).  Since then, we’ve been to lots of fun places, domestically and internationally.  Because of her insane amounts of food allergies, however, traveling takes a lot of preparation and planning.

Here are my top 5 tips for traveling with a kid who suffers from food allergies :

1. Bring a Doctor’s Note! Usually, airport security will let you through with a bottle or small container of milk (rice, almond, whole grain, soy or otherwise) for your infant.  However, as I learned the hard way, the cut off age for this is usually 2 years old.  Last summer, we were traveling to Montreal with our newly turned 3 year old.  We brought some individual box drinks of rice milk, but were not allowed through security because our daughter was over 2 (and therefore, no longer an infant).  We learned that a doctor’s note stating her allergies (to dairy, in this case) would have helped.  I’ve been traveling with one ever since.
2. Get a Kitchen. We make sure we have a kitchen wherever we travel.  This usually means renting a condo, apartment or house as opposed to booking a standard hotel room.  This can often times be more cost effective than a hotel.  For example, we booked a 3 bedroom house (with a private pool + yard + daily cleaning service) in Costa Rica for $120 / night.  Having a kitchen is necessary (and stress relieving) when you have allergies in the family.  Check out www.vrbo.com for fun options.
3. Send a Shopping List.  If you’re visiting family, like I was last weekend (San Francisco) with Peanut, I sent my brother and his wife a brief shopping list of items to have in stock when we arrived.  Easy!
4. Bring or Ship as much Food as you can! In our case, we always travel with Peanut’s favorite gluten free / dairy free / nut free / soy free snacks.  We even put big cartons of Rice Drink / Dream in our suitcase and pray they didn’t explode (they did once, on our way to Grand Cayman).  But, it’s easy to travel with pre-packaged goods : rice pasta, rice, quinoa, etc.
5. Research your Area. This may mean checking out the grocery stores (and their offerings), doctor’s offices and medical centers in the area ahead of time.  We once had to cancel a trip near the border of Panama because we realized the closest hospital (in case of medical emergency) was a 2 hour helicopter flight away from our lodging.

At the end of the day, food allergies shouldn’t restrict your travel completely!  It may be a bump in the road, but just a little one.  Enjoy!