Urticaria / hives - advice please

[juliaw]

My 9 month old has come out in hives / welts across his body on and off over past 2 weeks. Went to GP on Monday who gave piriton and they went down alot immediately so definitely an allergy. GP said to try and work out trigger and use pititon on ad hoc basis. Since then we have gone back to a basics diet giving things we know he did not react to when first started on solids, but we don't really know how long to wait between introducing foods, or indeed if it is even external cause eg grass pollen as seemed to come up after crawling outside a few times. We are keeping a diary - how long would we expect a reaction after giving new food / trigger? ie how long wait before introduce next new food? He has new hives today after having porridge oats mixed with water - could this be the gluten? He has always been a baby who glugs his milk and has from time to time projectile vomitted feeds but never seemed ill afterwards and generally a very contented baby. He has excellent weight gain which does not seem to fit with gluten allergy. Normal bowel movements eg not loose. We feel we have been left with lots of questions and not sure where to start in figuring this out. The welts were worse where his nappy was - can pressure on the skin aggravate the hives? Any advice on this welcome.

Sorry to hear you are having a tough time at the moment. IMO trying to work out what is causing a reaction is a really stressful time - so many possible triggers.

What I have learnt about hives is as follows:

1. Yes, hives can be caused by environmental factors such as pollens, washing powders etc etc as well as foods. Which obviously makes identifying the trigger much harder.

2. They can also be caused by , or may worse by, extremes of temperature - so the fact that your little one has worse ones in the nappy area can be accounted for by this.

3. Hives can sometimes be caused by the body's reaction to a virus.

4. Hives can appear up to 24-48 hours after exposure to trigger, tho usually are quicker than this. You can also get repeated crops of hives in response to a single exposure, over the period of a few days.

Sorry not to be of more help, maybe someone else will have some bright ideas.

sorry but not going to be much help. But our dd also gets hives regularly. Nothing much but comes out in tiny ish itchy bumps over her legs mainly when she eats certain things. Then she goes utterley mental cying and winging in discomfort as the itching drives her crazy. We have to then allow her an hour with us at least to confort her, rubbing her legs to try to help. She is 5yrs. We often grab for the periton too. She has a life threatening peanut allergy and many many food allergies of things she has to avoid or limit. maize/corn,carrots,green beans,bannana,kiwi,tomatoes,peppers. I start to forget it all now the list is becomming too long. She also reacts to grass pollen and dustmite so its often hard to know what causes it. However, this month I am having her tested on porridge(fingers crossed anyway, thats what I have asked them to do) as I noticed months and months ago that she became bad after eating it? I have also heard porridge can also be contaminated by barley. I have also once read a piece on the internet that links allergy to maize/corn to oats and barley. I have written on here asking people about an oat allergy but never had a reply. I think its not so common. However I could be barking up the wrong tree but it is all guess work. I have not given her porridge for months awaiting these tests. Then we shall go from there. She lives on weetabix lol. Poor thing. To afraid to give much so I sympathise totally

oats don't actually contain gluten themselves - but they are often contaminated with other things. Reactions to food usually appear quite quickly (i.e within minutes), although you can get delayed reactions. If he had the oats yesterday I'd think something like soap powder residue in clothing was more likely.

We were told it takes a food several days to leave the body so leave 4 days before introducing a new food.

Wash all their clothes in a non biolgical powder, keep them cool and keep a detailed diary. Note when you are in different places any change in the hives. Hives outside could be pollen but could be traces of animal dander in the grass. Some plants can cause nasty rashes so it might not be grass pollen.

Sorry but it isn't easy identiifying the cause of hives.

Hi Juliaw

Don't have much advice but just to say we went through exactly what you're going through with ds when he was 9 months old (he's 4 yo now). It drove me mad as ds was so uncomfortable with it whilst it lasted. Sometimes, there was no logic to when his hives appeared -e.g. during a meal it would suddenly come on so we'd think, aha, he's allergic to it but then, hang on, he had this exact food, yesterday and he was ok yesterday and then if we gave it to him a week later he'd be ok but not maybe another time. There was absolutely no logic to it except, unless we gave something that he's very allergic to (which is a long and length list). Anyway, he's kind of growing out of these sudden unexplicable rashes.

Just to say, if after trying hard, you still can't find the source and you can't find an obvious reason for his rashes, don't drive yourself mad trying to find the source.