8 month old with hives around mouth

[jackimari1]

Hello :) I have given my breast fed baby boy a little whipped cream off my finger 3 times and 3 times he got 2 or 3 hives around his mouth within a few minutes. He has tried regular formula a few times when he was a newborn and didn't seem to have much of a reacion except for gassiness. I would say the same when I eat dairy, just a little gassiness. I have an appt with an allergist coming up but my question is does this necessarily mean he has a full blown milk protein allergy? I obviously will wait to give him dairy until he is older and after my appt but am wondering if with your expertise if this could be something else other then an allergy. Could it just irritate the skin around his mouth? Thanks so much for your opinion in advance!!

Jackie

[lfpalmer]

There's corn syrup in commercial whipped creams, so it could be a corn allergy. There are also nitrous oxide allergies -- that's the propellant in Reddi Whip. The gassiness reactions to milk introductions are a red flag to me though. It takes a while usually to build an allergy, so the few bottles as an infant could have not been enough to find out what could have been, and he did exhibit some reaction. It's a little curious, but some babies will react minimally or not at all to foods in their mom's diet, but then react greatly to them directly. Those with multiple food reactions may tolerate some in mom's milk and not others. Anyway, "a little gas" probably means a little intestinal reaction, and that can go along with an immediate-type reaction. Intestinal sensitivities and immediate-type hives reactions are separate reactions though, so the intensity of one can't really predict the intensity of the other kind. 

In most cases, an allergist won't help with food reactions, but with the immediate-type hives reactions, IgE antibodies might just show up in a test. If they don't, that doesn't mean he's not allergic. If they do, however, you can be pretty sure he is, combined with the symptoms he's already shown.