What to do if your baby has food allergies

If you encounter a food allergy in your baby, you should stop all suspected allergic foods as soon as possible and observe the baby's condition first - as long as wheezing, tight throat, swollen face, or poor energy appear, don't hesitate to send the baby to the emergency room immediately. If there are no such critical symptoms, first wipe off the food residue on the skin surface and observe more. There is no need to rush to self-administer anti-allergy medicine.

Last week, my neighbor's 10-month-old baby just added two spoonfuls of steamed egg whites. Within ten minutes, a red rash appeared around her mouth. She kept rubbing her eyes and scratching her neck. Her hands were shaking and she wanted to rush to the hospital. Fortunately, she called a pediatrician she knew well first and found out that the baby was breathing smoothly and was not crying or vomiting. Then they wiped the baby's face, fed her two mouthfuls of warm water, stopped eating new foods, and the rash was completely gone in less than two hours.

Nowadays, there are different opinions on how to deal with the follow-up of allergies. Most of the older generation think that if you are allergic, you should stay away from it for the rest of your life to avoid suffering. Now, many pediatric allergy doctors will recommend that children with mild allergies should avoid it for 3-6 months, and then slowly try to contact it with a small dose under the supervision of a doctor. The latest research also believes that as long as it is not a severe allergic reaction, early and regular exposure to allergens in small doses can build immune tolerance faster and reduce the probability of long-term allergies. There is currently no absolute standard answer. You still have to follow the doctor's instructions based on the child's degree of allergy.

I have seen many parents who were so scared when their baby was allergic for the first time that they did not dare to add new complementary foods for half a year. In the end, the baby's weight and height were not up to standard when the baby was born. Some parents thought it was just a small rash and ignored it, so they continued to feed the allergic food. In the end, the baby had bloody stools and developed chronic urticaria before coming to the hospital. Both of these are not advisable. In fact, a baby's food allergy simply means that the baby's immune system is immature and mistakenly regards harmless food proteins as invading bad guys to attack. If you keep it from seeing these "bad guys", the immune system will never be able to develop the ability to distinguish. If you forcefully feed it too many "bad guys", it will easily lead to the fight against the respiratory tract and digestive tract, which will cause more serious problems.

Also, don’t randomly check the allergen test and give your child random food restrictions, especially for children under 1 year old. The immune system is not fully developed. The false positive rate of serum IgE test is very high. It can only be used as a reference and cannot be directly used as a basis for diagnosing allergies. My friend took her baby for a test before, and it showed that she was allergic to several things, including wheat and milk. The doctor specifically told her to judge the reaction based on the actual food. She went back and tried the same thing slowly. She found that except for the rash when eating pineapple, everything else was fine. She was nervous for several days.

In fact, most babies' food allergies are mild. As the immune system matures with age, most of them can tolerate it on their own. When adding new complementary foods, remember to add them one at a time. If there is no reaction for three to five days, add the next food. Don't panic if you have an allergy. Check the status first. If you are not sure, go to a professional doctor. It is more reliable than trying blindly at home.