How did you find your babies allergies?

[flyingbeet]

I have a 5 month old. She hasn't yet started solids but I know she is allergic to a food/foods. She's been diagnosed with cows milk protein allergy and I've excluded dairy out of my diet. Her symptoms improved drastically but they haven't completely gone away. She was formula fed the first 2 weeks since she was in the NICU and then once I started to exclusively breastfeed is when the symptoms got worse.

She's coming up to the age where I will start weaning her. I'm going to be safe and give her the same food for 3 days and monitor her reaction. However I don't understand how that will work because she could have a reaction to something from my breast milk so I'll never know what it was. I tried keeping a food dairy but I couldn't find a pattern. I feel so bad torturing my little one's gut when I see her in pain and see blood in her stools.

Is there another way to find out about her allergies. I've heard of the skin prick test and a blood test to determine allergies. Has anyone tried these methods?

We got referred by the GP to allergy clinic where they did a skin prick test, but I think you do need a vague idea what the allergy might be as they can’t test for everything at once. DD got a rash when eating egg for the first time so they tested her for that plus nuts and a couple of other things as we were there. Apparently egg allergy is very common in babies.

Does she have a ige or none ige cmpa? None ige allergies won’t show up on a skin prick test. Also allergies often don’t start until after few exposures?

Has she been refered to peadatric dieitian?

Have you tried elimating soya from your diet? Around half of children with cmpa
will also be allergic to soya milk.

Make sure you’re getting enough calcium, vitamin D and idoine.

@ru53 My baby has an appointment this Friday with the neonatology department. On the letter they said they may be able to do a skin prick test if we suspect any allergies. I rarely have nuts in my diet so I doubt it's that. It could be egg or soya or something else. I'm not sure but I may need to push them to check eggs and soya.

@Jingleberryalltheway She has non Ige which is why I'm also worried that the skin prick test won't catch the allergy. I don't know if a blood test might be better🤔

I have an appointment with a paediatric dietitian tomorrow. They will teach me how to wean my baby as she has cows milk protein allergy but I will talk to them about potential other allergies she may have. My GP told me it's not possible for my LO to get an allergic reaction through breast milk. At least she has referred me to a pediatrician but until I hear from them I have cut out eggs, soya, fish and nuts from my diet.

Lots and lots of food diaries!
We had identified about 6 of my daughter's 20 food allergies before starting weaning via reactions to me eating the food.
Thankfully she was very slow to wean so my diet still dominated reactions. I didn't give her the same food as me after she reacted to us both having red peppers. I saved her food I made for myself and gave her the next day if there was no obvious reaction. She has delayed allergies but reacted sometimes in less than 30 minutes with feeding aversions and needing to be held more. We found some behavioural changes that appeared quite early in a reaction which helped me identify foods as they would happen the same day I ate a food rather than a few days later for the rash and nappy changes.
Unfortunately nonige can only be diagnosed by carefully testing and removing foods. It takes time. We had foods in and out of her diet for ages. There were also non allergy reactions - she struggled with banana until about 18 months, beetroot gave rancid smelling poos but no other signs of reaction. She was wheat/gluten intolerant so from 18months to 3 years had to have a low wheat/gluten diet.

Oh and absolutely anything can be an allergen. My daughter is allergic to more vegetables than top 14 allergens! The hardest to identify was onions and garlic!

@flyingbeet the blood tests literally measure IgE levels so, like skin prick testing, only identify IgE mediated allergies. The only way to diagnose non IgE mediated allergies is exclusion/reintroduction unfortunately.