Bucks County Twins Write Children’s Books About Dealing With Food Allergies

A Bucks County native turned Montgomery County mom is on a mission to make food allergies easier to understand and deal with.

Lora Cipriano, who was raised in Levittown, was pushed full force into the confusing and hectic world of food allergies when her son, Alex, now 3, was just a few months old.

Alex, who was being breastfed, would constantly have a red face and terrible cradle cap, a condition that was getting worse when Alex was just four months old. Cipriano’s pediatrician blamed the conditions on Alex being a “summer baby” and stressed she had nothing to worry about.

“I’m glad I followed my motherly instincts,” Cipriano said about following the pediatrician appointment with one at an allergist’s office.

The allergist, after conducting a test, determined little Alex had allergies to eggs, pine nuts, tree nuts, peanuts, and sunflower seeds. According to Cipriano, since she was eating those things and then breastfeeding Alex, it was having a direct effect on his health.

“Had I not been breastfeeding, I would have never known,” she said, after noting they may have escaped quite a dangerous situation. “Alex has never directly had an egg or any nuts himself.”

For Cipriano, she was then dealing with something completely unknown. Although food allergies can be hereditary, she noted no one in her family has ever battled an allergy related to diet. “When he was first diagnosed, I felt completely lost,” she told LevittownNow.com.

Cipriano began taking recipes and then adapting them to fit her son’s new required diet. When she realized she had over 100 pages typed in a Microsoft document, she gave the copy to her sister Leanne Sebastian for editing before making the book available through Amazon self publishing.

Since the cookbook’s release in April of 2014, Cipriano and her sister have worked together on six children’s picture books that also deal with food allergy topics.

“Alex is only three, so he doesn’t exactly understand the books, but it was important to me that he heard the words,” she said. “We wrote the children’s books because I really couldn’t find any that talked about it.”

The books, which Cipriano described as “materials for parents to give their children” discuss things like sitting at a certain allergy free lunch table, and having to bring your own desserts to birthday parties, all something kids with allergies are accustomed to dealing with.

The sisters, who are also twins, just released their latest book, which explores the conundrums of trick or treating.

“A lot of moms struggle with whether to let their kids go trick or treating,” she said. “But I personally don’t want my child to feel left out of anything, so in the book we had the characters go trick or treating and then give the candy to their dentist who then donated it to troops serving overseas.”

Cipriano said her and her sister’s latest picture book may explore the Valentine’s Day holiday.

For Cipriano and her family, knowledge has been key in helping to understand food and keeping her little Alex safe and healthy.

Visit the sister’s Facebook page