Slightly puffy ear after trying cheese for the first time.

[mumat39]

Hello

DD has been dairy free since she was about 8 months old. She's never really had a dairy allergy but she was taken off it as she was very itchy as a baby and had infected eczema on 2 occassions. SHe has lots of food allergies so the other reason she was taken off dairy was to give her skin a chance to calm down before the first set of skin prick tests could be done.

In an attempt to start getting a bit more variety into her diet, her allergy nurse suggested trying her on cheese. I have already been letting her have Kinnerton Milk chocolate and she seems to have been fine with this.

I tried DD on a small sliver of mild cheddar this afternoon and she enjoyed it and didn't seem to complain of anything funny in her mouth. However, after about 5 minutes, I notice her ear had become red and a little puffy. I called her allergy nurse and she suggested I wait and see if it settled by itself before giving her any piriton.

It did settle down after about an hour and looked less puffy but was still red.

Could this have been a reaction to the cheese? She didn't get any hives anywhere, although there may have been a couple on her ear. She did seem more itchy afterwards though.

The cheese had been in the fridge for about 3 weeks so not sure if that could have caused it. The allergy nurse said that usually cheese should be eaten within 3 - 5 days but we always take a few weeks to get through a block.

The allergy nurse said that I should try again tomorrow as that sort of ear reaction isn't a common one, and it could have been a coincidence with something else like dust or even a virus as DD had a cold last week.

She asked me to call her back and I did after a couple of hours and she said that I could relax as she was out of the anaphylaxis window, which I had no idea about. Apparently anytime after ingestion to 2 hours. [shocked]

When DD had her first reaction to wheat at 6.5 months old, she was covered in hives and I remember her ear looking like a rugby players. It was huge and puffy. The A&E staff kept commenting that they'd never seen that in a baby before.

So, I have seen her have a puffy ear, but is it in your experience common to react in this way?

I'll get a fresh pack of the same cheese and will try again but am feeling a little nervous. The nurse did suggest maybe trying with yogurt instead but I asked her if it would be better to just do the cheese so we know. Otherwise, I find it confusing. Do you think that't the right thing to do?

Thanks in advance.

I'd have expected more than just one ear to have reacted with an allergy. You could try patch-testing with a little of the cheese rubbed on her skin, rather than risking her eating it.

Just logged on with an update.

We did as the nurse suggested and gave DD some more cheese from a fresh block yesterday and she didn't react to this so the ear was hopefully nothing to do with that.

We also tried her on some twice today and she was okay. I'm going to keep giving her a small amount for a few days and will then try and give her slightly more.

I'm so excited about her being able to have some different foods. I'm planning on trying fromage frais or yogurt in a week or so. I just hope my excitement doesn't jinx this. Sometimes I worry that maybe I do, if that makes sense.

snooter, thanks for your reply. I asked the allergy nurse about how to test this and should we test on her skin first and she said that when they do food challenges at the hospital now, they no longer test foods on the skin as they find that children with sensitive skin seem to react on their skins but are fine with ingesting the food. I don't know if this is common practice for all allergy clinics.