Baby allergy

[mummymary1]

Hi everyone
Im trying to do some research on weaning baby and have come across allergies.
How do you deal with weaning baby and looking out for allergies?
Do you have any tips/advice on best way to try to avoid causing an allergy with baby?
Am I being overly cautious about this or is it a worry most parents have?
I have a sensitive stomach to lactose so wonder if this may be the same.
TIA!

Dh has severe allergies and we were advised to give the common allergens early into weaning and not hold back. My hv also said that if I was worried, to give them during office hours (my GP is walking distance from home so could run there in serious need) or with someone else at home to support if medical help was needed

You can't cause an allergy, only discover it. It's scary. My 6 month old DD was ambulanced to hospital after discovering one. What I have learnt is -

You must expose them to the common ones. Egg. Dairy. Peanut etc as this actually helps them not be allergic.

Introduce new foods one at a time - when we were in hospital they were able to figure out the allergen because it's the only thing she had eaten within the right time frame.

Allergies usually get worse. The first time DD had hers she just had a rash around her mouth and threw up. I didn't think anything of it. The second time she had it all hell broke loose. So if you see a mild reaction, don't ignore it

His face swelling up was a pretty good clue!

Even though I ran into the GPs 5 minuts later clutching a half-dressed, screaming baby with little facial features left; couldnt open his eyes for days, it still took 2 mire appointments to get a referal topaediatrics and diagnosis was 6 months after the first reaction.

Egg was easy to identify as that was something eaten in isolation.We don't really use milk so it was obscured in everything else which was harder to pin down, but with hindsight, the eczema started a coupke of weeks before weaning when I tried giving him formula to see if it would help him sleepfor more than two hours at a time.

Advice is to introduce allergens early. Dd1 isn't allergic to any food. Dd2 had some peanut butter on toast at 7 months. And ambulance ride and a hospital stay later and she now always has 2 EpiPens on her. She's 3 and has had 2 allergy tests. Luckily she's not shown any other allergens but her peanut allergy has gotten worse.

Yes, the old advice to delay the introduction of potential allergens has now been reversed, and the advice is to introduce these foods early - from as early as 4-5months, for example, in the case of a baby at high risk of peanut allergy. (Importantly, in this case a watered-down version of peanut butter is given, as whole nuts are a choking hazard, and neither can young babies manage the thick, sticky texture of undiluted peanut butter.) This advice is targeted at high-risk babies in particular though, where atopic disease runs in the family, and not at the general population. The advice about having another adult in the house at the time is good, particularly for somone with other young children. I have to admit that I took the precaution of being close to the local hospital when introducing nuts to my younger children, as their brother has multiple food allergies. That may have been an overreaction on my part though! Remember too, that there may be very little reaction the first time you introduce a food if the body hasn't been exposed to it before, so you need to offer a food a few times when checking for potential allergic reactions.

I don't think lactose intolerance falls into the category of atopic disease though, does it? It's asthma or eczema or other allergies in the family that you need to watch out for.