Peanut allergy and early exposure

[morescribbles]

I felt that I had to speak after watching the news today. The new research for peanut allergy prevention is very positive which is encouraging. My only concern is that the media were promoting early exposure without making the risks very clear. I wanted to add a personal experience to help mums thinking about this in their choices.

My husband and I don't have any food allergies, neither of us have asthma. I have always had mild eczema but I used to love peanuts. When our first daughter was born I followed weaning guides and one guide suggested giving your baby peanut butter from six months if there were no food allergies in the family. I had no reason to think that there would be a problem so I waited until she was eight months and gave her a little peanut butter on toast. There was no problem the first time but as I discovered later, it is the second time you expose a child that the allergy can strike. The second time I gave my daughter peanut butter the reaction was swift. She started to cough and visably started to redden, her skin became blotchy and developed hives then her lips started to swell. She was crying all the while with discomfort. Thankfully we have a hospital ten minutes down the road. By the time we reached the hospital her lips were puffed out and horribly swollen and she was having awful difficulty breathing. Our daughter is the only one of our five children who has any allergies. She is now 13, still has a severe nut allergy and has to carry an epipen.

The reason that I wanted to add this experience was to show that if you are considering this early introduction it is definitely worth seeking advice from a doctor if there is any chance at all that your child could have allergies. These tests promoting early introduction were carried out under medical supervision. My fear is that parents could make the same mistake that I made thinking that if an expert promotes early introduction for babies it should be okay.

Good luck! Hopefully nut allergies will be cured one day but for now be careful!

i worry about it myself, too

I have no history of allergies, but DH has asthma and is triggered by dust mites and some pollens.

He loves peanuts.
I was brought up in a house with peanuts, but never really ate many myself - i probably ate a few handfuls in the pub or around christmas, but not really many at all (my dad used to eat peanuts all the time)

My DD has a peanut allergy, and rather bad eczema (officially it's acute), but she's never really had peanuts herself - I don't like peanut butter, but had a little bit when pregnant (but then I had cashew nut butter too), and she had a little bit on crackers when starting to eat solids.
I wouldn't class it as exposure, and as her eczema's so bad anyway, i couldn't tell you if she reacts to it - certainly she's not bad like your DD (i think the allergy test came back at about 50%, so the Dr said we'd bebest not to feed her peanuts deliberately, but not to worry too much about avoiding them in "may contain" foods.

She's not allergic to any other nuts, but is allergic to sesame and pollens and dust mites.

Not that keeping this stuff to a minimum has done anything to solve her eczema.

But yes, i agree, it's not necessarily a good idea to introduce something "early" just because it's advised.
I think it probably has more to do with mum's exposure to it than child's - if the mum never eats xyz, then there's no way the baby can have an immunity to it already, therefore if the baby's body goes "hang on a minute, that's a bit weird" it will build up antibodies.

But of course, i have no medical research background, so mine's only hypothesis and has absolutely no founding at all.
(more extrapolation from what research has said, really)

I wasn't worried. DD1 has peanut butter on toast from 6mo. This is back in 2011. You are supposed to I introduce each allergen separately. You can have just as severe a reactive to dairy and egg. The reason why nut allergy can be hard to manage is a sufferer can be affected without ingesting the nut.

Like I said it could happen to any of the known allergen.