How to go about a milk challenge for 17 month old with dairy allergy?

[Monstrosity]

I'm hoping someone with some experience is able to offer some advice as I don't really know what to do!

DD is allergic to dairy, has a reaction rash with hives and has reacted to things that say they may contain dairy, so we've avoided all dairy no matter how small an ingredient in foods. At her last dietician appt we were advised to give her a biscuit before her next appt, so I plucked up the courage and gave her a malted milk (the only biscuit she didn't refuse!) and she had no reaction! I can't quite believe it! So what do I do now? Our next appointment has been cancelled and isn't for a couple of months now, so I'm not sure if I'm supposed to carry on giving her biscuits if she doesn't have a reaction, or try other foods such as yoghurt which she had quite a bad reaction to previously. I think I'm worried about making it worse, if she is growing out of her allergy I don't want to do anything to make it worse again! Any advice would be very welcome.

Thanks for your reply Babybarrister. It's really appreciated. You seem to have reinforced what I thought, that just because baked milk may be ok it doesn't mean other 'raw' milk products will be. I think I'll wait a week, try another biscuit, and then wait for our next appointments with the paed and dietician to get their advice. As you say I don't want to introduce food too quickly and undo any tolerance. It's complicated isn't it? I was shocked to read your thread about the fruit juice. If only restaurants etc realised how important it is that they know the ingredients in their products. It's very frustrating.

If your docs suggest that you do give milk in a raw state, ask that you do it with them observiing , rather than doing a home challenge.
Does your pead also a immunologist? ask , as many dont, it might be worth pushing to be reffered, or get them to take advice from one.

just a thought.

I am personally am not a fan of home challenges and would not attempt one unless my sons immunologist said it was ok.

All the challenges we have had we have had have been in hospital.

I would be very dbious of advice to the contrary.

have to agree with the others and keep well clear of home grown food challenges. Our dietician suggested last year that we should try a gentle introduction to dairy products but I was always dubious and other events got in the way so nothing came of it. Thank god because only last month DD had a bread roll with milk in (or on it) and had her first full blown anaphylactic reaction.

The same dietician said (so may have no ounce of truth in it!) that the dairy element in biscuits tends to be butter and therefore predominantly fat so the amount of protein is low. People with an allergy to cows milk react to the proteins so she said that you would have to be quite allergic to milk to react to a biscuit.

as I say there may be no truth in that but I would keep away from all dairy products for now until you've seen the specialist

Have to agree that food challenges at home are a very bad idea, given how badly my son's wheat challenge went in hospital I would certainly never consider doing it without medical supervision - very scary.

No no no to home challenge.

DS had a milk challenge in hospital, they thought he was going to pass, was on 2nd last syringe and then a hive appeared and suddenly whoosh he looked like an extra from Dr who and was vomiting everywhere. Had I been at home I would have used the epipen as he seemed so floppy. Was really quite scary the severity of the reaction and how quickly it came on.

I would continue to give the biscuits, but steer clear of milk in its raw state until your next appointment.

I agree with post above, cows milk protein comes in many forms and it's ability to cause a reaction depends on it's form. Biscuits is probably one of the mildest ways you can have it so if he was ok with it continuing him only on the exact same biscuits is what I'd do.

I guess it also depends on tour dd's reaction, has she ever had an anaphylactic reaction or is it mainly rashes she gets?

Personally we have only done food challenges in hospital settings but that is because DD has had several anaphylactic reactions to various foods. I would be very scared to do anything at home.

I've had DD (at 21 months) challenged in hospital and she couldn't tolerate more than 50ml, the allergist said to give her biscuits containing dairy but stay away from anything else.

Yoghurt they said had a higher concentration of protein, they made us (attempt to) give her some because she wasn't having any more milk for love or money... (as in less yoghurt = same amount of cmp as bigger amount of milk).

2 weeks ago DD licked a spoon of dairy-based chocolate icecream (naive me!!!), and had hives after 2 min... so I'm def sticking to the biscuits...