If my baby is allergic, should I avoid the allergens as well

[Hope54321]

I have started weaning and my baby is breaking out in hives as a reaction to some foods. He also suffers from eczema. I’m breastfeeding at the moment. Does this mean that I should also avoid the foods that he is allergic to?

Sorry if this sounds like a silly question.

Yes I would, it may help the excema.

It depends! If you think the allergens in your diet are causing reactions in the baby then I would - my dd had terrible eczema until I cut out egg from my diet as a baby when we discovered her allergy weaning her.

But if you think your diet isn’t causing severe reactions in your baby, and if their allergic reactions to the food aren’t anaphylactic, I think the advice is to continue to gradually expose them to the allergen in the hopes they’ll grow out of the allergy. So I would continue to expose them to the allergen in tiny amounts through your breast milk in that case. Once we determined my dd’s egg allergy was lessening, I reintroduced egg into my diet successfully and we began to put her on the egg ladder (eating cakes baked with egg, then dried egg pasta etc. Working up to more eggy foods!)

Don’t give up anything until you talk to an allergy consultant as it depends on the food and whether it’s a contact allergy or a true one or just a normal side effect of having a poor skin barrier.

DS has ezcema and so reacts to anything with citrus or spice and gets what looks like big hives but are really just inflamed patches of ezcema. He does have a true intolerance to mustard and tomatoes (tested) but the allergy consultant wants us to keep them going in small amounts to prevent a worse allergy later.

I would cut them out for 6 weeks and see if his eczema starts to improve.