first appointment at allergy clinic.

After the egg reaction, i was more careful about his food, removing all egg, and avoiding nuts.
I also kept to the same limited food he was happy with, and was too scared to try anything new.
Breastfeeding came to an end at 15 months, resulting in longer sleep pattern, and being soothed by other means.
His sleep development ,did seem to match a younger child. Which made sense , a infant in pain is not going to learn to drop of to sleep by himself, or sleep in normal periods of time. so he was about 2 1/2 when he slept a whole night , which was about 4-5 nights a week.
Of course , once the breastfeeding stopped, his skin improved , down to three to four daily moisturizing ezcema routines, rather than 8-or more.
The big downside was the loss of protection, and his health suffered. He caught eveything going from his brothers, chest infections,ear infections, skin infections, you name it , he got it.

The ezcema wrap nurse rang up out of the blue to say that she had forgotten all about william, and had lost his paperwork. But by then I could see improvement, and that it was allergy related, and felt it was more under control.

He was 18 months old when his first allergy clinic appointment day dawned.
I was just creeping out of the nasty sicky stage of being pregnant (hmmm, well, that was linked to the stopping breastfeeding, and williams longer sleep pattern as well!! and a bottle of red wine, but i mustnt drift in to that in detail...) and had made arrangement for the older boys to be taken to nursery and school.

The clinic was heaving with families, little kids with raw ezcema running around, and others sitting with red arms with hives from skin prick tests.
william was weighed, measured, and then we went in to see the big doc, and his students.
He asked about william's early history, his reactions etc, then asked about our history and our other children.
We started listing our family itchy status on both sides of the family.
i didnt mention that even my mother's dog has ezcema, and sneezed a bit, but that was the only member of my family i must of missed out.

i hadnt thought of it before, but suddenly it did seem odd, i thought it normal to spend saturday night test patching new moisterizers with granny, uncle and mummy in the kitchen. My mum always used me as test person before her, as she considered her skin to be worse than mine.

I still have a the clear memory of my mum when she used a upper lip bleach for her dark hairs.............her top lip walked in front of her for two weeks!!
my mum also has a nickal/gold allergy , and had to go to hospital after her wedding to have her band removed. The nasty looks she got when she had me, just because she couldnt wear her wedding ring. That was the 1960's for you!

anyway am waffling, so must get back to point, which is that the doc seemed REALLY, (oh, good grief dont you two breed look,no, ooops too late! she preggers again!) shocked that the older boys didnt have anything much in the way of allergic disease. a hint of ezcema , very mild hayfever , which disappeard at 5 , which is normal.

The skin prick tests went without a hitch, the blood taken was more of an ordeal.
However , the SPTs were fasinating for us and william. Like the game bingo, we could have shouted 'full house'............he was instantly uncomfortable as the small prick went in to the peanut drop. The blister rising.


The problem with getting to the hosptial, I reflected later, was the effort was in getting there, and not thinking beyond that. Every parent hopes for a magic wand from a doctor to make baby better. It doesnt work that way for many things, allergies included. What we seemed to get from that first visit was a confirmation of the allergies we suspected. A few more, and a unhelpful leaflet, and the comment to never use the hoover in the house , while william was in it.
I had no idea what sort of place was suitable to put william in while i was vacumming,which part of the house was dustmite free.? But safe to put a dustmite allergic 18 month old boy? I did look in the cupboard under the stairs, but that may have been suitable for Harry Potter, but not for william with his dustmite allergy....

our list at that time,
was, a selection of common tree nuts, almond, hazlenut, brazil, peanut, dustmite, tree pollen,raw egg, cooked egg, dog,cat.

I cried in the car on the way home , it seemed like a huge list.