Help advice needed about antihistamine

[Verticallines]

My 5 year old son has an itchy rash of raised bumps on his arms and legs. Some on his face too. We think it may be a Reaction to sun cream as it’s on the areas we applied it. Although it might not be. His face was quite red and blotchy too.

I gave him lotradine for kids last night and I can’t give another for 24 hours , so that’ll be 5pm. However he’s woken up this morning and is ripping his skin to shreds, lots of little raised bumps that are so itchy, he’s really irritable and uncomfortable. I’m keeping him off school and will try and get a GP appointment, but what can I do about anti histamine?

I don’t understand why it’s not working as it should last 24 hours?

I personally would give another anti histamine . I’ve do so many times . But I know some people don’t like to go beyond the recommendations.
also try calamine lotion to help with the itching

Poor little thing! My daughter has an egg allergy, she's only 2 but has been prescived a 6 years + dose of cetrizine hydrochloride (piriton)

Could you try a different type of antihistamine? Obvs not a dr but i would xx

Try a different type
Bicarb cool bath
Speak to the pharmacist about a topical lotion or cream

It sounds like you need to get some Piriton, which is an all purpose allergy treatment rather than the cetrizine or loratidine based ones, which are tailored to hayfever relief. Make sure you get Piriton, not Piriteze. It's kept behind the counter at the chemists. But really, the poor little chap needs a proper diagnosis. Hope he improves quickly.

This just simply isn't true. An antihistamine doesn't know what sort of allergy you have. The marketing may target hayfever or whatever, but an allergy is an allergy.
Piriton is is one of the older antihistamines (chlorpheniramine maleate) so is more likely to cause drowsiness.
Remember you don't need branded antihistamines, just get the Boots version, or Tesco etc.

If you can’t get a GP appointment then take him down to the pharmacy and ask their advice.

Cold bath or ice packs on the very itchy bits (ice pack wrapped in a towel obviously)

Calamine lotion

I would very strongly push for a GP appointment, see pharmacist if you can’t get one

I was keeping my reply brief but I think what I really meant was that Piriton is what a doctor will most likely recommend for these sort of symptoms from an unknown allergy whereas they might recommend one of the others if it was pretty clear you have hayfever. But as I said, ultimately a doctor's advice is needed for a situation like these. Of course antihistamines don't have little radar devices that allow them to target certain types of allergy.

Is there a piriton that doesn’t cause drowsiness? As I didn’t want him drowsy at school really.

Got a GP appointment for this afternoon

Piriton is always chlorpheniramine maleate. There are lots of non drowsy antihistamines - ask the pharmacist.
We use fexofenadine (Allevia) but I don't know if that's licenced for children - again, ask the pharmacist.

We found that some antihistamines worked brilliantly for our son (severe hay-fever and bumpy rash from the sun, from 4yrs) while others did nothing. Every few yrs we would have to 'search' again as if his body was accustomed to the tablets so effects diminished.
We once went to the pharmacist who refused to give anything else as hed already had max dose , got a GP appointment who happily put him on higher dose which helped greatly.

Loratadine doesn’t really work for my son, we find cetirizine or chlorphenamine maleate more effective. He gets really bad prickly heat/sun allergy which is made worse by most suncreams.
Best solution we have found is altruist suncream (ultra sun also ok but far more expensive), keeping on top of the antihistamine, and a bath or shower at the end of the day to wash the suncream off followed by poxclin mousse (yep, the one for chickenpox)

Been prescribed a hydrocortisone cream for the rash on his body and Epimax cream for his face.

Also told to continue with lotradine once a day because of school and I don’t want him drowsy.