4 year old has large tonsils (always has)

[davisme]

My daughter is 4 and has always had large tonsils (and adenoids?) for such a petite thing. For the most part she manages okay (some snoring) with them but when she gets sick they get so large that she gets sleep apnea. We are coming off a virus/rash (5ths disease?) and it's been about 2 weeks but her tonsils are still large and her sleep apnea is terrible. She wakes constantly, which interrupts my sleep as well. When I lay/fall asleep with her I feel that I am trying to breath for her. It drives me crazy.

She has a dairy intolerance as well and if she has dairy it makes her stuffy. We do not give her dairy at home but there are times that she gets it when not with us.

Are there any recommendations that I can try to treat this at home? Can I shrink her tonsils? I really don't want have them taken out but I do feel that this disturbs her sleep more than I realize. She has always been a terrible sleeper, still wears pull ups to bed. Her older brother had his tonsils and adenoids out at 2 for sleep apnea as well. And yes he did very well with it and we have never looked back but with her I just would like to take a look at all the options.

Thanks

[tanyalynn]

I'd remove the rest of the dairy from her diet. My DD's tonsils reduced to a normal size after we removed gluten and dairy, our allergens, from our diet. Took about a month, I saw other improvements in DD in the meantime, the tonsils were the slowest. It was less than a week before DD stopped wetting the bed at night (no idea how much the timing varies from person-to-person, but it seems a repeating theme in the Allergies forum).

[SuburbanHippie]

Ditto ^ that. Just removing milk, cheese, etc probably isn't going to be enough. I would bet if you removed all dairy, which requires a lot of label reading, her tonsils would shrink back down.

[davisme]

The ONLY dairy she receives is when she is not with us (daycare) and its given by not careful reading of ingredient sometimes. Such as two weeks ago my SIL didn't think about the microwave popcorn she had given her.

Edited to add:
I nursed her for 2 years due to her dairy intolerance. I was dairy free myself for those 2 years. She drinks hemp milk and I go to extreme lengths to make sure that she does not have dairy. However as noted above when she is not with me others are not as diligent as her dad and I because its not an "allergy" but an intolerance.

She has 2 more weeks of daycare and then she will be with me 100% of the time for the summer until fall. I know it can take up to 3 weeks for things to be out her system.

I may try an gluten free diet as well the first few weeks and see how that works.

[davisme]

But is there anything that help her right now? I guess that is what I am asking?

[tanyalynn]

I don't know of anything, say a supp or diet change, that can change things so that she sleeps better tonight or tomorrow or by the weekend.

Check the old threads on this topic for how long it took other kids' tonsils to respond to diet changes, I don't know how typical the 1-month period was for DD.