baby got hives from eating it, can I still eat it?

[Wugmama]

So I made pancakes with the following ingredients:

rice flour
coconut milk
tapioca starch
sucanant
sea salt
water

added real maple syrup to the pancake.

Baby ate a few bites and almost immediately broke out in about 20 small hives on her face and neck.

I am wondering if I can/should still eat them? I'm not sure what it was that caused it but suspect the cocount milk. It was geisha brand including guar gum. It said in parens something like "E1221".

Any thoughts?

~Tracy

[changingseasons]

If baby got hives from it, then no- I would not suggest that you eat it either.

I finally found some good coconut milk at the Asian market that didn't have guar gum. (Of course, then it turned out that DD reacts to coconut anyway... )

[Chinese Pistache]

I wouldn't eat it. That's a pretty bad reaction, imo.

I sympathize, though. I'd just stocked up on cans of coconut and made a whole batch of coconut yogurt when I figured out dd was allergic to it:

[mommydancer]

I agree w/ PP's. I don't knowingly eat something once I know DS has reacted, and I would take hives seriously. I am sorry, though. I really know how bad it is to have gotten so close to being able to eat something and then have to pull back. There were a couple incidents at the beginning of my efforts where I actually had warm food on a plate before thinking of something or reading something, and realizing I couldn't have whatever it was. A bit of crying too, sometimes.

[Wugmama]

It's just that I've had all those things before and never noticed a reaction in the baby after I've eaten it. And I've read others post on here thabe their lo can tolerate them (the bf'ing) mama having it. So I thought maybe it was ok.

Also, the hives were mild. Her face got red and rashy looking, and she started scratching. Then she got 15 - 20 small hives on only her face and chest. The kind that look just like a little mosquito bite. Every once in a while, but not lately, she will get 2-3 hives like that on her forehead. We put her clay on them and they disappear right away.

I wonder if it was the guar gum. I had some coconut milk in cans from the health food store, some organic brand, and I can't remember if it haebed guar gum or not. I did just remember I have some creamed coconut in a box from the health food store and looked at it. It is "let's do ...Organic" brand and the only ingredient is coconut. They are a pain to use though, you have to put it in boiling water.

Should I try again with this coconut milk and see what happens to her?

~Tracy

[Ofwait]

An IgE reaction like that? No.

[Wugmama]

I don't know what the reaction was to specifically.

She has seen 11 different practitioners. The last allergist we went to told me that it is somewhat of a myth that reactions will be worse with each subsequent exposure. He said typically, the reaction one has to an allergen will be the reaction one always has.

[changingseasons]

Originally Posted by Wugmama

I don't know what the reaction was to specifically.

She has seen 11 different practitioners. The last allergist we went to told me that it is somewhat of a myth that reactions will be worse with each subsequent exposure. He said typically, the reaction one has to an allergen will be the reaction one always has.

I can't believe he would actually say that. Reactions definitely CAN get worse every time. I can testify to that with my reaction to penecillin drugs. The last time I had an abx that was related to penecillin (which they said I had a 1 in a million chance of being allergic to ) I was completely covered in hives- head to toe. You could hardly see any normal skin on me. That was by far the worst reaction I've had. I'm sure that if I ever had a penecillin product again, my throat would close up.

PLUS, you can be fine with something your entire life and then have an allergy come up out of nowhere and have an anaphylactic reaction. So no, your reactions are not going to be the same every time you have a food.

I agree with PP's- if your LO is reacting that quickly with hives, that is serious. Definitely do NOT try the food again. Maybe try a different coconut milk that doesn't have guar gum. Or it could just be the coconut... I thought DD was fine with coconut, was eating it for a while... then finally did an official trial with coconut oil (after getting some other allergens out of my diet), and she had a huge reaction.

That's the other thing- if you haven't eaten a food in a while, the reaction might be worse than it was initially. So maybe she was always having a reaction to the coconut, but it was too minor to notice (maybe just digestive), but this time it was a more severe reaction and affected her skin.

[mtn.mama]

I'm going to look at things a different way.

There are several foods that I can eat but my daughter can't. She's still 98% breastfed at 14 months.

Occasionally there has been a food that was fine forever through breastmilk,
then dd tries it directly and reacts, and then it's no longer okay through BM.
But I think we're at a point in healing now where most foods don't make it through my BM.

I would crystal test each ingredient to help make my decision. I do this every morning and every evening to help decipher what is going on with my kid. This morning it told me no more rice crackers for my little girl, so that's what it'll be.

Otherwise you'll have to pull all the ingredients from your diets and trial each one individually. Not my idea of fun.

Good luck, I hate seeing my kid react... but we're to the point where we can't avoid EVERY food prophylactically, so we're going with what works. Crystal testing works for us. I hope it will work for you!

[Wugmama]

I was crystal testing (well, pendulum testing anyways) for awhile and misplaced both. It had told my tapioca was bad, but I've used it anyways. Maybe it was the tapioca in the pancakes. Tomorrow I'm going to make a new pendulum and have dh do the testing - he rocks at it.

Big bummer. Baby broke out again today. I think it was because the pancake we ate together made it out into my milk, but not sure. The last time she had a big break out in rashy hives she broke out a bit each day, less each time.


~Tracy

[Wugmama]

I have my dh armed with a pendulum, tapioca, rice flour, sea salt, some of the coconut milk that was used, and the real maple syrup. Hopefully we will get to the bottom of this. He has had amazing results when he has done this testing for her.

~Tracy

[Wugmama]

Still stumped. He said this:

ALL the things in the jars came back as ok for lefa (I did syrup too). The only one not as "true" as the others was the T bottle... I tested it first - then did all the rest, then came back to that one. It then came back ok.

The 'T' was the tapioca.

[changingseasons]

Interesting. I suspect that DD reacts to tapioca, but I'm not positive because we've never done an official trial. But she seemed to have a reaction when my old brand of rice noodles added tapioca starch to the ingredient list.

[Wugmama]

Really? I think I'm going to avoid it from now on.

She didn't react to kathy's buckwheat waffles. I put together some corn-free baking powder for that recipe. Now I can't remember if I used tapioca in that or not. I think maybe I used arrowroot, salt and baking soda?

I still need to figure out what cake recipe to use, so wish I knew for sure. I guess I'll try to avoid tapioca and coconut milk in the cake. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the rice flour that did it, or the syrup - she had that on the waffle.

~Tracy