Allergist Appointment

I talked about our appointment with the allergist last year here and it was time for a check-up for Baby Girl today.  As a recap: we thought she was allergic to milk, but has no milk allergy and a very mild contact allergy to eggs.  We were told to hold off on nuts until she turned 3.  She hasn't had any pure eggs since our appointment last year and we've only seen one breakout from a stovetop macaroni and cheese that I made that had an egg as a binder.  I've made dishes like this where you bake it and it was fine--I'm wondering if the egg didn't get warm enough or something.  The nice thing about her allergy is that as soon as we wipe off her face, the breakout goes away.

Baby Girl was tested again using the skin prick test.  She reacted much more poorly than she did last year--she listened SO well and didn't move, but was laying on the table (I sat next to her and rubbed her hair and face) crying big tears.  As soon as I was allowed to, I picked her up and snuggled her.  She was fine within about 30 seconds, but I felt horrible for her after seeing those tears rolling down her cheeks.  We were left alone for 15 minutes to allow the spots to react and she did GREAT not touching her back.  She even told The Hubby and me not to touch her back when we were picking her up.  She played with the toys they had there and was very sweet to everyone, as usual.

The doctor came back in when the timer went off and checked her out.  The egg spot hardly reacted at all, which is great news!  He said that in a few months we can start to slowly introduce some egg to build up her tolerance and to help encourage her body to outgrow the allergy.  He also said we could introduce peanut butter whenever we want.  Because The Hubby and I eat a fair amount of it, Baby Girl has been interested in trying it for awhile (but will say "I don't like peanut butter" or "I don't like eggs" when asked--we've tried explaining to her that it's just that they don't like her very much...).

I did have a revelation this morning about how different things like this will be once Baby Boy is here.  We always schedule appointments as early as possible so we can just go straight from home, but we won't want to have to take Baby Boy with us in the future, so we'll either have to divide and conquer (The Hubby and I have each only missed one doctor appointment for Baby Girl and both were sick appointments) or run Baby Boy to the sitter and then go to Baby Girl's appointment (or vice versa).  The things you don't think about....

Allergies

Baby Girl has another cold.  Who would've thought, huh?  We were actually healthy for a week or two, but then she went back to the sitter's (the sitter took a vacation), where one of the other kids had a snotty nose and a cough.  And now, guess what?  She's got a snotty nose and a cough.  She's really handling it well and it's only cut a couple of naps short, but she is overall sleeping fine.  I'm hoping she's on the uphill now--we'll see.  As usual, if it doesn't clear up some by mid-week we'll be heading to the doctor to have her ears checked.

Oh, and now I've got a runny nose.  I was blaming it on allergies yesterday, but today I'm not so sure. 

This brings to me to my ongoing question--to medicate or not?

I was having this debate mostly when I thought it was allergies.  You see, before getting pregnant, I was on four different allergy medications with limited success.  I am allergic to just about every environmental allergen out there and the worst part is that it settles into my ears and causes major ear pain and dizziness.  Oh, and my other allergy sufferers have runny eyes and nose and sneezing, making it obvious they're suffering...and I don't.  So that sort of sucks.

But since getting pregnant and then nursing full-time I haven't dealt with much as far as allergies go.  I've had days where I felt stuffy or had some ear pain, but it was never as bad as it had been--yay!  Unfortunately, it seems that whatever those hormones were doing to keep me from suffering has stopped working and now I need to make some decisions about whether I should start taking some medications.  The medications that I would think would be the safest for nursing (since I am still nursing once a day), nose sprays, aren't classified as particularly safe.  And the pills are going to do some drying and I fear they will impact my supply (which is pretty much non-existent anyway).  So I could take the meds right after nursing Baby Girl and hope that she doesn't get much through the milk the next evening, which is what I'm leaning toward. 

The biggest problem, though, is that I'm frustrated that there isn't a single doctor that can help with both symptoms and knowing what's safe for nursing.  Even my OB/GYN didn't seem to know for sure what meds are safe during nursing.  My primary care physician looks it up in a book, which is more than any other doctors I've had.  My allergist, though, didn't seem to know what would be safe when I'd asked him previously, which is why I haven't been back to see him since 2008 (besides the trip for Baby Girl's allergy testing).  I need someone who can look at my allergy symptoms and suggest medications that will work well and will also be safe for Baby Girl.  There are suggestions out on the web, but I would prefer to get it from a doctor who can see the whole picture.  I suppose that's where a holistic doctor would come into the picture...but they don't seem particularly apt to prescribing meds, which, in this case, I need!

Just frustrated, I suppose.  I'm not looking forward to suffering through the next 7-8 months without any allergy meds.  I'll do what I have to do, but am hoping I can find some sort of happy medium that won't harm Baby Girl but will help me with my symptoms.

Doctor Updates

(Dude...this is long.)

Wow.  I was looking back through my old blog posts and realized I never posted an update to our specialist appointments we had at the beginning of December.  I must've been a bit burnt out from NaBloPoMo (or whatever the abbreviation is!).

Since her 15 month appointment, we've now visited three specialists and the pediatrician three times (at least?). 

Specialist #1, The Cardiologist:  On December 1st we had an appointment at a center run by the local Children's Hospital because of the heart murmur that has persisted.  Our pediatrician told us he was really sure it wasn't anything, but thought we should get it checked out.  Good news is that he was right.  The cardiologist told us that it's not problematic and that we shouldn't even mention it on medical history forms.  We left that meeting feeling really great!

Specialist #2, The Endocrinologist: The same day we went to the cardiologist (in the same building), we visited an endocrinologist, who was supposed to look at her development.  He asked us a lot of questions and looked over Baby Girl and determined that there wasn't any reason for concern unless we started noticing more signs of her approaching puberty (pubic hair, armpit hair, etc.).  We still haven't and, in fact, her baby boobies seem to be more in proportion than they were.  Great doctor visit again!

Pediatrician visits: Ear infection after ear infection.  Enough said.

Eighteen Month Pediatrician Visit:  Still planning a whole post on her development, but should give the important stats.  Weight: 23 lbs 4 oz. (30th percentile) Height: 31 inches (35th percentile)  Head circumference: 75th percentile (although we're done with head measurement now)  She got some vaccinations and handled them really well, as usual.  She'll get one or two more at her 2 year appointment (2 year??!??!?!!??!!) and then that will be it until she starts kindergarten (again...kindergarten???!??!??!?!!?!).  The doctor was impressed by her development but did think we should talk to a specialist about our suspicion of a milk allergy.  He told us "Before we'll through, we'll have you at every specialist in town".  Let's hope that isn't true.  He figured it wasn't a big issue, but thought we should get her tested.

Specialist #3, The Allergist: This morning The Hubby and I took Baby Girl to see our allergist (I started going to him years ago, then he went and visited him not long before Baby Girl was born), who was also the person that our pediatrician was recommending to us.  We got there at 9:00, checked in, then were taken for Baby Girl to be weighed.  She was a little freaked about standing on the scale and cried some, but was fine by the time I took her off.  We went back to the room where we found....TOYS!  They weren't great quality (much to the dismay of The Hubby, the Etch-a-Sketch was broken), but Baby Girl was excited to play with them all.  We gave some background to the doctor's assistant, then to the doctor himself.  The assistant asked us to get her disrobed (or nakey, as Baby Girl calls it) from the waist up, then came back and had us lay Baby Girl across my lap.  Begin tears (from Baby Girl...not me.  This time.).  She didn't even know what was coming, but still started crying.  The assistant then left to allow the reactions to happen.

We were looking at her back during the 15 minute wait and saw 2 pretty large spots that were reacting and then one much smaller and another that was BARELY red. We assumed one of the big spots was milk. When the doctor came back he said one of the big spots was a control and the other was eggs. The smaller spot below the egg one was milk and then the very smallest was peanuts. She didn't react to tomatoes, cod, soy, chocolate, and some others. The doctor mentioned that the reason she doesn't seem to like eggs (the only way we've gotten her to eat them is by covering them in ketchup) might be because of the allergy but said that as long as we don't notice a reaction from things made with eggs, we can continue to cook with them and proceed as we are--just don't try to force her into eating just eggs anymore.


As for the milk, he said we could keep giving her milk and milk products as we are now and give her cow's milk when we're ready as long as her reaction doesn't worsen. He says it isn't doing any harm to keep giving her milk.

He also said that there isn't any connection between allergies and breastfeeding. Bummer!  Sort of glad no one told me that in the first few months of nursing.

Lastly, he said we should delay introducing nuts until she's 3 because she has other food allergies.  Not a huge deal, I suppose (although I love peanut butter and that makes me a teeny bit sad that she can't have any until then!).

We'll go back in a year to get her retested.

Whew.  And that's it.  For now.