My 9 month old has food allergies and actually, he has been diagnosed with them for several months now. I often get asked how in the world that can be as he was exclusively breastfed until he was just over 6 months old. So let me tell you a little bit about how we figured out we had a baby with food allergies and what I recommend you do if you think your baby has food allergies. If you are interested in reading Leroy’s story more in-depth, check out this post I wrote about it.

Let me start off by saying that this was our experience and I’m not offering any medical advice. But at the beginning of our food allergy journey, I had a hard time finding personal stories about babies with food allergies. So here is what our journey looks like so far.

Backstory

My family has a history of asthma and as I have now learned, asthma, allergies, and eczema are all carried on the same gene. So even though no one else in the family has food allergies, the asthma that runs from my father to me to Mac meant that Leroy had a chance at getting any or all of those afflictions.

The First Signs

Right from birth, Leroy was a spit-up baby. Yes, every baby spits up, but Leroy spit up a lot, both volume-wise and frequency. It was like Exorcism spit-up at least once a day. I kept looking online and just saw that a lot of times, spit up looked like a lot more than it actually was and not to worry. But I was starting to worry because there were some days where we both changed our outfits like four times. That just did not seem normal.

The other sign was his eczema. He had rough skin, but it was Minnesota in winter. I just thought he had dry skin like we all do. The doctor looked at him and said it looked like eczema and set us up with a skin care routine to do with him daily.

I asked if these issues may be connected and the pediatrician suggested we start an elimination diet and she would talk to some other doctors to see what they thought. This was our first dead end as the doctors she talked to both said they thought it was nothing but normal baby stuff.

Follow Your Mom Sense

One thing I have learned throughout this entire process is to trust my mom gut. Very early on, I had a sense that he had allergies, specifically peanut allergies. I was told by two different pediatricians how unlikely it would be for him to have a peanut allergy that presented at such an early age. But I just couldn’t kick the feeling that he was allergic.

It wasn’t just my mom gut though. I had been doing a lot of reading about food proteins, especially peanut, being transmitted through breastmilk and I just had a gut feeling. Of course, I’m not medically trained in any way, so I wasn’t sure I should suggest anything. Looking back, I should have pushed for testing earlier than we did.

We ended up doing a blood test because we saw a different pediatrician while our regular pediatrician was on vacation. After thorough questioning, she decided we should just do a blood test.

Test Results

When the test results came back, egg whites were just above the normal range into the allergy range and peanuts were significantly above the allergy level. He did in fact have a peanut allergy.

We did a scratch test to confirm the two allergens he had tested positive for in his blood test and the allergist decided to also test for dust mites as that was a more over-arching allergy that may explain some things.

A scratch test is pretty simple. They scratch the skin on the back with something that also introduces the allergen into the body. They also do a negative and positive scratch. The positive is a histamine and shows what an allergic reaction would look like in that person. The negative is saline and shows how that person’s body reacts to being poked in general.

After our wait time, there was nothing in the “dust mites” categories, but both peanuts and eggs had swollen up and were positive for an allergy.

As a side note, doing the scratch test on a baby was really easy. The scratch doesn’t actually hurt, but try explaining that to a toddler. The nurse told me that they have had toddlers that took four adults to hold down to do the testing. So, if you are worried about doing the test on a baby, don’t be. They won’t remember it and probably won’t even mind.

The picture below was what Leroy’s eczema looked like when it would flare up before we cut the allergens out of my diet.

Looking for Other Allergies

Now, Leroy started being diagnosed with food allergies right as he was starting solid foods. It was a little scary to try to figure out what to feed him while being careful about introducing him to any of the other top allergens.

I finally came around to having him try wheat and the first time he ate a piece of toast, his eye got a weird pink ring around it about a half hour later. We went to do a scratch test for wheat and at this appointment, I also suggested we test for dairy as his refluxing had gone way down after I cut diary out of my diet.

So we had another appointment for a scratch test to test for wheat and dairy. The good news was that he didn’t react at all to wheat. But strangely enough, he reacted to dairy. The nurse mentioned it was strange because he hadn’t actually eaten dairy before, but to me, that was just par for the course. We are currently thinking that perhaps dairy is the trigger for his eosinophilic esophagitis, which is a different sort of allergic reaction that I talk about more in this post with Leroy’s full story.

His First Real Reaction

Up until about two weeks ago, Leroy had never had a “real” reaction. We had caught all of his allergies before he actually ingested them. And then he ate hummus.

One day for lunch, I heated up some rice and mixed some hummus with it. Leroy loved it! He was eating it and after a few minutes, I noticed some redness around his mouth. At first, I wrote it off because I thought of hummus as a “safe” food. But the redness started to spread around his face. I realized then that he was having his first reaction.

It didn’t get any worse than the rash, but we go in next week to test for a sesame seed allergy. Thankfully this reaction was mild because it made me realize just how mindful I need to be. As the mother of a baby with food allergies, I need to always be on guard.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Besides feeling like we live in doctor’s offices, we are starting in-office eating challenges this week. Leroy will be trying to ingest some of the foods he has tested positive for to see if he can handle any of that food. He will be doing his peanut eating challenge this week. After that, we will be scheduling eating challenges for dairy and baked eggs.

What to Do if I Have a Baby with Food Allergies?

Well, I can’t help you make any sort of medical decisions. But if you think it is a possibility, tell your pediatrician. Press for a blood test. Trust your gut. Do some research. I kept a food diary in the notes on my phone that noted symptoms alongside what I ate. I even included pictures of rashes that popped up.

Overall, know that allergies are not the end of the world. They certainly change how you eat, but they are able to be controlled and your child can still be happy and healthy.

Do you have a baby with food allergies? How was your journey to the diagnosis different?