Allergies

A few weeks ago I had a bit of a scare when Elliot broke out in hives after eating some yogurt.  I've grown accustomed to his face turning red and blotchy when eating and figure he just has sensitive skin.  The hives worried me a little and I talked to his pediatrician about it at his 9 month well check.  Dr. Graham suspected a possible cow milk protein allergy so he called in a referral to an allergist to have him tested.  We went this afternoon for his test.  He did surprisingly well with the one hour wait to see the doctor (he was much more patient than I was).

Yes, I let my kid crawl around on the floor in the exam room. After waiting that long there was no way he was going to stay in my lap any longer.

The doctor came in and checked him out and we discussed what the concerns were with certain foods.  She told me they would be doing a scratch test and would test cow milk, soy, peanut and casein.  I stripped him down and the nurse came in to administer the test:

There were 6 dots due to the positive and negative control test as well.

I couldn't let him rest his back on anything for 15 minutes while we waited to see if he reacted, so I let him crawl around some more:

After 15 minutes we had this:

The bottom right was the positive control and the top middle was the cow milk one. So it appears that Dr. Graham was on to something and Elliot does in fact have a cow milk allergy. Damn.

Dr. Streck said that a lot of kids do grow out of it and she scheduled us to come back in three months to have him retested. In the meantime we are to avoid raw milk products (milk, yogurt and cheese) and can give him benedryl if he inadvertently gets some (stealing food from his brother).  I really hope that he does grow out of this because I'd hate for him to have to miss out on grilled cheese, pizza, yogurt, ice cream and all the other good dairy treats.

I'm happy we got some answers even if it wasn't what I wanted.  Now I'll just watch my little smoosh nap and be thankful that he was such a trooper throughout the whole ordeal.