Lily was about two and a half when we first noticed something was wrong. We would have never suspected that she’d have food allergies, so we were completely lost when she started getting rashes. I wanted to write this blog post to give all the information I could from our experience!
Lily had just celebrated her second birthday when she started waking up in the middle of the night and complaining of an itchy scalp. We assumed it was just from dry skin! So we got her a moisturizing shampoo and tried to push her to drink more water. But soon, she was complaining of the itching every single night and now it wasn’t just her scalp, it was her neck too. We noticed red blotches all over the back of her neck and on her scalp. The itching seemed worse when she was hot so her pediatrician assumed it was just heat rash.
What we learned was that rashes are so hard for doctors to decipher. They kind of just have to do a process of elimination and try to guess what it could be. Lily’s rash would come and go so it was really hard for her doctor to figure out what it was just from pictures on my phone of the outbreaks. Unfortunately, it wasn’t heat rash and for the next few months we tried everything we could to alleviate the itching but nothing seemed to help it. So we took her back in to see her pediatrician. Her pediatrician told us that it was possibly a fungal infection. We were then informed that the medication for the fungal infection had some pretty severe side effects…which completely scared us out of it. By that time, I had been doing some research of my own and I asked her doctor if it could be food allergies…she said no. She didn’t think it was food allergies because the symptoms would have started around the time that we introduced food to Lily. She said it wouldn’t just happen overnight.
We listened to the information her pediatrician had to offer but we ultimately decided to get a second opinion.
I made an appointment with a local pediatric dermatologist who was able to get us in fairly quickly! (Most of the time they are booked out at least 12 months!) Lily was now almost 3 years old and her rashes had started appearing more frequently and she seemed to be itching all day long. I felt so terrible for her! When the dermatologist saw her, she immediately said it was hives. We were relieved to have an answer and relieved it wasn’t a fungal infection but the dermatologist told us that we couldn’t know for sure what exactly was causing it. We would have to figure that part out ourselves. Her allergies could be to anything! Surprisingly though, the dermatologist didn’t think it was a food allergy either.
So we went home and tried our best to rid our house of any allergens that could possibly be causing her rash. We tried changing up her diet so she wasn’t eating so many processed foods, she started taking probiotics, and we stopped using anything with fragrances or too many chemicals. Over the next couple of months, she started getting the rash on the insides of her arms, backs of her knees, and even her eyes would get red. The rash would get red and scaly (eczema) and on some occasions she would break out in hives all over her body. It was such a stressful time because we were constantly trying different things and nothing seemed to work for her.
One night while I was on Instagram, I had seen a friend post that her toddler aged son was suffering from food allergies. I messaged her and found out that she had taken him to an allergist who tested him for specific allergies. I made an appointment for Lily. At her allergist appointment, they did a skin test where they pricked the skin on her back with certain allergens to see if she was allergic to certain foods. It was one of the hardest things I had to see my baby go through! She cried the entire time 🙁 but we were so desperate for answers to help her get better.
Thankfully, from Lily’s prick test we were given a full list of foods she was allergic to. I immediately cut everything from her diet and the rashes stopped! Her allergist had told us that some of the foods on her list may not be causing the rash. Some of the results may not be true allergies. So over the next year, we did “food tests” with her. One week we would bring back a food into her diet and see if the rash appeared.
We now have a defined list of about 10 foods that she is allergic to. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that we now know what her allergies are! We had never dealt with food allergies before so we were totally out of our league.
Many people might see food allergies as an inconvenience but it has been the complete opposite for us. We are now extremely conscious of what we feed both of our kiddos! It has also made us cook at home the majority of the time because we don’t want her to accidentally eat something that would cause a break out. We have also been able to find amazing substitutes for certain foods that she can’t eat. None of us eat the foods that Lily is allergic to. This helps her to never feel left out or bad about her allergies. To be honest, she really doesn’t miss eating those foods anyways! 🙂