Baby reacted to egg - next steps?

[Shmerlock]

Hello all! After some advice regarding allergies and people's experiences with egg in particular. I'll try and give some back story and hopefully it makes sense!

My little girl is just over 6 months and we've been weaning for coming up to 2 weeks. So far I've been giving her mashed veggies and some fingers of cooked veggies too. This morning I decided to try her with some scrambled egg, mixed with a bit of my breast milk. Within 5 minutes she came out in a red, nettle-like rash all over the parts of her skin the egg had touched! Even her little fingers where she'd held it! The rash didn't appear anywhere else of her body though, and so far today her nappies have been normal and she's been her usual self. Is this signs of it being a skin allergy or a full blown egg allergy!?

She's had terrible silent reflux since birth, it has steadily got better but she still has flare ups every now and then - and is always gulping/swallowing throughout the day. Our GP initially said it was CMPA, so I've been dairy free for over 5 weeks now. But I was always skeptical, now I'm wondering if it's egg and not dairy!?

We're booked in with a dietician but not until mid-Feb. My question is - do I now also remove all egg from my diet as well as dairy? Or do I carry on as normal for now and wait until I see the dietician? This rash is the first time we've seen any sort of reaction like this.

Thanks for reading! Xx

2 out of my 3 DS have/had an egg allergy with almost identical rashes to yours. One grew out of it and the other hasn't yet (age 4)
If you don't want to wait for NHS you can get paediatric skin prick test done privately through Nuffield. We are south East and it was £150. But you do need a GP referral. You can also give antihistamine to babies (over the counter ones will say no) but once my sons allergy was confirmed the doctor was able to get a correct dose based on their weight etc. this cleared up any reaction very swiftly once prescribed. Good luck with it all.

Go for allergy referral you can still see dietician for cmpa although in end allergy clinic just dealt with it all for us. Dietitian was really just to explain milk ladder. I don't know how much you know about allergies but an instant reaction comes under ige reaction so it's important to get it checked out fot anaphylaxis. I'd cut it until seen.

@PragmaticWench thanks for sharing your experiences - did you introduce the other allergens from 6 months? Even if she'd previously reacted to another? So for example if she reacted to egg, did you still introduce peanut? Or would you advise waiting until a skin prick test has been done? I'm now terrified she's going to react to something else, and in a much more severe way!

@workingtheusername I don't know much to be honest, finding it all daunting and really hoping we don't have lots of other allergies!! Sorry I'm a bit clueless - what does ige mean?

@Abneyandteal19 that's good to know, thank you!! Money is so tight at the moment but if push came to shove and it was a crazily long wait we'd find a way

[quote Shmerlock]@abbs1 that's brilliant advice, thank you! She is suspected to have a milk allergy so it wouldn't surprise me! I'm going to get straight on to the GP tomorrow and request a referral for her.[/quote]
If GP referral time is long speak to your HV. My HV referred my little boy to the allergy nurse as it came under the same team as the HV team and I had a phone call with her within a week during the first big lockdown when my little boy was only weeks old. Shes been calling me every month for past 20 months and helped me through the weaning process and now my son has nearly passed the milk ladder and is only non anaphylaxis to whole milk so he has lactose free milk but can have butter, icecream, cheese etc. Hes allergic to nuts but hes come a long way with her help and also the paediatrician did skin prick tests when he was about 14/15 months old.

Kids allergic to egg and more likely to be allergic to peas and nuts so just be very careful if you give your little one anything like that. Also kids with milk allergies are more likely to have soya allergies but can take several weeks before symptoms show.

I really hope you can get lots of help and support for your little one.

@abbs1 thank you! And I didn't know that - she's had peas a couple of times now mashed with courgette and I haven't noticed anything, but will be more aware now!! It feels like a bit if a minefield at the moment, hopefully we can get some answers soon!

DS1 had a very similar pattern to your DD with CMP and egg allergy except that he had eczema as well. He outgrew milk allergy by 2yo but then added chick peas, lentils, peanuts and sesame to the list.

By 10yo he outgrew chick peas and lentils and now at 14yo is doing well on the egg challenge. We are still advised to steer clear of sesame and nuts as these are less likely to be outgrown.

Echo what others have said, a paediatric allergy specialist is what you need for full testing. Be aware allergies don't tend to develop until a few exposures so if she hasn't had nuts yet she would not necessarily give an accurate test. I would be cautious with introducing nuts although as PP has said, the current thinking is that early exposure can help prevent allergies developing.

A friend of mine with severe allergies in the family drove her son to the nearby hospital car park when he first tried peanut butter, just in case!

[quote Shmerlock]@Abneyandteal19 that's good to know, thank you!! Money is so tight at the moment but if push came to shove and it was a crazily long wait we'd find a way[/quote]
Hopefully you won't need to but if you do Google who the allergy consultants are at your hospital then Google to see if they work privately.

There are some bogus allergy tests out there like hair samples etc, make sure you see a reputable allergy doctor :)

Breastfed DD didn't become sensitised to egg until she had some herself. After that she reacted to me having lightly cooked egg - so it's possible egg hasn't been a problem all along but is now....

Given the immediate rash I wouldn't try any more egg directly, but just so you know egg changes so much with cooking it's quite common for them to be OK with baked and not OK with partly / uncooked egg (raw egg in particular you want to be very careful with). My DD reacted to both directly, but thankfully for my cake addiction didn't react to me having baked eggs, just lightly cooked ones. There are some good Facebook support groups, DD outgrew the last of her allergies a couple of years ago so I'm not up to date but 'breastfeeding with CMPA and other food allergies' always used to be good, they used to be strict about advice being in line with NHS best practices / guidelines.

@MegBusset do you think we should introduce other allergy foods sooner rather than later?

My son went into anaphylaxis after trying scrambled egg for the first time at 6 months, he also couldn't tolerate dairy well but those symptoms were confined to his tummy (wind, bloating and reflux mainly). With the egg, his skin blistered within minutes and he started to vomit and choke as we arrived at the hospital, we have had Jext adrenaline pens for him since and were referred to the allergy clinic. His first reaction was in March 2020 and he has had the skin prick tests twice since, each time showing he still has a very severe allergy to egg, our consultant has advised to continue complete avoidance.
The only other things we have found him to be allergic to are several types of antibiotics. In your position, I would avoid egg completely and ask for a referral to an allergy clinic through your GP, as a second exposure can cause a worse reaction. It feels like there is egg in everything soft and easily accessible for weaning babies, but it does get easier, and there are lots of Instagram weaning pages with egg free versions of recipes too

@SouthOfFrance thank you so much for all your advice!

@CrabbyCat this sounds like our current situation!! Thanks for sharing, that's really reassuring to know!

You’ve had tons of suggestions here but I just wanted to mention that I happened to pick up the Annabel Karmel weaning cook book in the library today and it has a really interesting section on allergies and egg allergies including good alternatives for recipes. My experience is absolutely not the same as others here but thought I’d mention it all the same!

@Pinkstegosaurus thank you!

Oggs Cakes, that's my other gem of advice. You're welcome.

@Shmerlock sorry, just seen you asked me a question.

I was SO scared to introduce the other major allergens but when we finally saw an allergy consultant they were annoyed we'd waited to introduce them to DD's diet. I was upset as you wait so long on the referral list with no information on what to do with weaning!

Allergyuk.org is a good resource. We were told by the consultant to try all the allergens ad soon as possible, one at a time. We tried each one baked first (less potent) and tried it several times over a week. If no reaction we kept it in her diet.

@PragmaticWench thank you and I'm so relieved you said that! My GP advised me this morning to wait until we see the allergy clinic to add anything new - but also told us it would be at least 4 weeks until we received a letter inviting us to an appointment!! So I didn't really want to leave it that long! I'm going to check out the website, thanks so much for sharing!

We had this with my daughter when weaning. 111 advised Piriton which cleared it up in no time. We got referred to an allergy clinic via the GP who advised us to wait until she was 2 and then try her again with a small amount of egg. We hadn't noticed any issues with other foods where egg was an ingredient (e.g cake) but pure egg flared her up.

Since reintroducing egg at 2, she's had no problems whatsoever.

@PetitPorpoise hello! This was my thread, I've name changed since. It's been a while since I've looked at this one! My little girl is now 2 and 2 months, can't believe how fast it's gone, and is still dairy and egg free unfortunately 😔. Her dairy allergy hasn't really improved at all, she can sometimes manage egg baked in a cake but we haven't progressed any further on eggs - I tried her with hard boiled only a few weeks ago and her stomach and nappies afterwards were awful. I didn't update this thread at the time, but after the initial skin reaction she also had horrendous gastro symptoms 24 hours later! This is in line with her dairy allergy too - both seem to really impact her stomach. Still holding out hope that as she gets older she'll improve 🤞. We had her 2 year review the other week and they've referred us back to the dietitian for advice and see if they can help us create a plan to get her on to dairy. Fingers crossed! Updates like yours give me hope though that we'll get there eventually!

Oh sorry, I didn't realise that it was an old thread! I do hope your daughter grows out of it. I was really worried at the time. She also struggled with excema terribly as a baby which some other posters seem to have experienced, but apart from the occasional bit in her elbows, she is better.