Has your child grown out of a milk allergy - or not?

[CER]

My 3 year old ds has multiple allergies, including severe allergies to milk and eggs. He had some skin prick tests done when he was a year old and had a 10mm wheal to milk and 8mm wheal to egg. When these were repeated a year ago the wheals had reduced to 8mm and 6mm.

The allergy specialist regarded this as a positive sign and I let myself get my hopes up that perhaps he would grow out of his allergies.
Things have definately improved but today he was playing with some bread dough at nursery that contained a small amount of milk powder. His hands and arms came up in huge wheals wherever the dough had touched him.

I'm beginning to feel that all the other children that we know who have allergies are showing much more progress in growing out of their allergies than ds is in outgrowing his and it would be good to hear other people's experiences.

My son had a severe milk allergy when he was little. He had anaphylactic reactions to it until he was 2+ years old and then only had lesser reactions (ie he didn't start dying immediately). I had him tested every year until he was about 4 and then every 1/2 year thereafter. He tested fine (through a thoroughly scary, incident, in hindsight) at age 5 1/2.

Severe allergies take time. My son's prev allergist said he might grow out of his peanut allergy 2 or so years after he had grown out of his milk allergy. He's 6 1/2 now.

If you want more info, please feel free to CAT me or email me at jj at flubus dot com

My son had severe egg and milk allergies with anaphylatic reactions. He out grew the milk allergy at about 4 (he is now almost 5) and the egg allergy is now much better - he can have well cooked eggs so birthday cakes now aren't a nightmare - but we still avoid raw/uncooked eggs.
He had one set of skin pricks at less than a year and I was then told just to challenge him with the food every so often - bit hair raising to do but seems to have told me what I need to know - for one thing I realised that a bit of the wrong food at a party wasn't going to kill him right away! The summer he turned 3 he was still having bad milk reactions, but that had gone by the time he started nursery at 4. Hopefully you'll see a big change in a year as well.

My dd outgrew her milk allergy by the time she was 2. She still has an egg allergy and she is 4 now.

When you say after the pinpick tests she had wheals, do you mean the reaction around the site of the pinprick? If you do, I am seriously surprised that whoever did them seem to think this is a reliable estimation of how severe the allergy is. Dd's reaction to the pinprick tests (in terms of skin reaction) has always been severe. For example, the egg one was done right by her wrist. After 2 minutes, the red wheal and rash was right up to her shoulder. However, I know she is fine now with well-cooked egg and raw egg gives her a terrible rash but she doesn't stop breathing (or anything more severe). The skin reaction has never changed even though her actual allergy seems much less severe to me.

I would think the better way to test would be food challenges. Would it be possible for them to admit ds for them rather than just pinpricks? It gives you and them a much better idea of how bad the allergy is and how much they can handle before a reaction occurs (they start with just a touch of the food). As it's in a hospital environment, at least it's safe! Then if the egg and milk are still severe you can warn the nursery to steer completely clear of both.

As with JJ, they can be done on an annual basis to check how they are progressing.

The other thing...and this is no criticism of your nursery at all...but I found out belatedly that dd's nursery had been giving her food with milk in (because the label hadn't said milk, it had used another term and they hadn't thought to check). I think this REALLY slowed down her outgrowing the milk allergy as she was being exposed to the allergen all the time (and for a while the reaction got much worse).

It might be worth double checking that the nursery know what to look out for (i.e. alternative names for milk, egg on ingredient lists). I'm sure you've probably done all this already so please don't feel that I'm talking down to you! It's just that I really felt it made a difference to dd and I was really pissed off with myself for not doing it sooner.

My dd (now 7) has had severe milk and egg allergy (anaphylactic reactions) since she was tiny. Outgrew egg anaphylaxis by 5 but is still very intolerant to both raw and cooked. Milk just still goes on and on though .... and I was originally told that everything would be OK by the time she was 2!!!! I just don't think it is possible to predict how these things will pan out. Met someone in the allergy clinic in the summer who's child had outgrown milk allergy at 5, been fine for 2 years, not being a great fan of it but having no adverse reactions and then wham, at 7, ate something with milk in and had a full blown anaphylactic reaction!! That is scary and just goes to show you how unpredictable these things can be and just how different everyone's experiences can be.

I have given up hope and now just look on the positive side of things and congratulate myself on how healthy we all are now in not eating all that processed food, in cutting out all that cholesterol, saving all that money by not being able to eat out and becoming an expert vegan baker!!!

However, it is not an easy thing to live with and I hope that your ds is successful in seeing some signs of improvement in the not too distant future.

Thank you for all your messages. It's given me hope that there is still a chance!

JJ, it would be good to have a chat. Dh is away at the moment so I don't have much time to email but I will be in contact when he gets back.

Foxinsocks, I realised after I posted that it sounded like this was the nursery's fault. Infact they are fantastic and I couldn't ask them to do more for ds, or be more vigilant.

It was actually my decision to let him try playing with the dough and I was there incase he did react. He had an egg challenge in hospital last year and reacted straight away. The doctors agreed that there was no point in even trying a milk challenge as I could reel off so many incidents of him reacting to milk eg. me touching a milk carton and then touching him, me kissing him after eating ice cream.

We haven't had any incidents like that for about 6 months now though, and I was hoping that perhaps I was being unnecessarily cautious - obviously not!

I'm not very keen on having another challenge at the moment because putting the canula ( I think that's what you call it anyway - the tube incase he needed IV adrenelin) in was so awful, and I found the fact that we had to stay there all afternoon having his bp and temp monitored after a relatively small reaction (in his terms) quite farsical.

I was as confident as you can be that he wouldn't have an anaphylactic reaction as long as none of the dough went near his mouth, so this was my way of challenging him in the same type of way that LizP was advised to do.

I appreciate what you said about skin prick tests though and have sometimes wondered if his skin reacts more than he would if he actually ate something. However, on the basis of previous reactions, there's no way I would deliberately give him something to eat and as it seems that a food challenge would still get no further than a touch of food around his mouth, perhaps the only way that we will find out is through somebody accidentally giving him dairy or egg.

I can't see that happening at the moment though as I had already managed to put the fear of God into all our friends and relatives about what would happen if they go anywhere near him with these products, and I know that the nursery will make extra sure that no mistakes happen after seeing his reaction to the dough!

How does your dd cope with her milk allergy coral? Ds is so sensible even though he is only 3. Somebody asked him if he wanted butter the other day even though they meant dairy free spread and were holding his packet of spread, but he still said no as he knows he can't have butter. However, when we're playing he says things like "This is a sad shop, there's nothing for me in here" which really upsets me. He also looks longingly at the cakes at birthday parties even though I always make a substitute one for him.

Thanks again for all your messages I really appreciated them.

oh I'm glad everything is under control at the nursery! I became a bit paranoid about things like that after finding out mine were being lax! And yes, those lines they put in are horrible aren't they.

Sounds like you have a really sensible boy there CER and I really hope things start to improve for you and him.

CER,

It sounds like your ds is very much like my dd - a very sensible and informed head on very young shoulders. I have always maintained that having to cope with this has made my dd old before her time! However, she just takes it in her stride! It didn't bother her that much until she started Reception when the incidence of parties just explodes out of all proportion - had a year of feeling very sorry for herself about having to take her own food to parties and always having to be saying no to sweets! However, as she made firm friends she stopped her longing and is now in 7th heaven that I will allow her to go to tea at her 2 best friends houses without me (I thank my lucky stars that they have such fantastic and accomodating mothers). Indeed, they now look out for her when they are out and about together and I have seen her friends on more than one occassion telling off someone who's dishing out food at a party for even daring to put ice cream near my dd.

I know what you mean about putting the fear of god into relatives! I thought I had done this when my dd was 2ish. An Aunt of mine made a big fuss about making a vegan cake for her and I stupidly didn't think to check what she put in it. My daughter who had been told she could eat in eagerly awaiting a slice, picked it up and put it to her lips only to declare in a big loud voice that it was "smelly" and burst into tears. Turned out it had eggs in it!! After seeing this I did actually relax a little as I am convinced that seriously allergic kids do have a heightened sense of smell in some weird kind of self-preservation factor way. Needless to say, the Aunt never offered to cokk for dd again!!

As my dd is now a very sensible 7 I am now thinking about very very slowly introducing making her more responsible for her own medication - I would be interested in some feedback from mums with older kids who carry epipens as to when they became responsible for carrying and administering their own medication.

Message withdrawn

my 4 year old still cets a contact rash from dairy. His nursery are good about checking food, but if he does erupt, they won't give him piriton, they call me in to give it to him by which time it's totally pointless. Does anyone else have that problem?

Inmysparetime, no, DS's nursery will administer piriton, inhaler and corticoids if they were needed immediatly, I wrote a "protocol" for them to follow up to recognise the reactions and to decide on treatment, obviously they still need to contact us but we have signed a form specifying that if for any reason they can not contact us and DS is in need of urgent help, to proceed acording my instructions, which also include to ring an ambulance if they deem it necesary.

Hello CER

I'm in the same position.
My DS is 3, he's not even being tested yet with the skin tests as his IGE blood levels are so high. The consultant is going to wait till he is 5 just to start testing him. Shows no signs of outgrowing his allergies.

He got bad hives the other day from touching the carpet where I had split a cup of tea (with some milk in it) - I had cleaned the split tea up and wipoed that carpet clean but still he got a bad rash of hives.

Hello CER

I'm in the same position.
My DS is 3, he's not even being tested yet with the skin tests as his IGE blood levels are so high. The consultant is going to wait till he is 5 just to start testing him. Shows no signs of outgrowing his allergies.

He got bad hives the other day from touching the carpet where I had split a cup of tea (with some milk in it) - I had cleaned the split tea up and wipoed that carpet clean but still he got a bad rash of hives.

i have a 13month old son who is allergic to milk and soya, diagnosed at 4months old. had blood tests (8of them) taken last week to test for egg, gluten, nut etc and his antibodies to food?dont quite know how the antibody thing works. Anyway he is a nightmare, wakes every hour at night, drinks copious amounts of water and is generally quite miserable (when hes happy its wonderfull, but doesnt happen very often!)so glad to have found this website,ive felt very isolated caring for him.