[EzzysMom]

I'm trying to figure out if my daughter has some kind of food allergy, or is it stress or is it just dry skin because the air is dry. For most of the winter, she's had reddish, slightly peeling dry skin on her cheeks. It first got my attention when we were starting solids (6 months) and had felt like it was maybe a reaction to bananas or sweet potatoes. We introduce foods one at a time with 5 days at least in between. I cut out the bananas and it got a bit better, we reintroduced and it didn't seem to get worse.

This past week it got particularly bad, when I had just finished up introducing yogurt, and had introduced soy. She eats cheese already, but no straight up cows milk or egg whites yet.

I thought it might be stress because I tried to join a gym and have her join the day care there, and she was ok the first day for a while, but screamed after 30 minutes and the other days I got in 3.5 minutes of a workout, followed by two days of her not even letting me leave the room. So I've now quit the gym. The weather this past week was also really dry.

Today, it suddenly looks better. I haven't cut out any foods, she had soy and cheese yesterday. We ran some humidifiers.

I asked my doc about it, and she just said dry skin. But she's very mainstream and I wouldn't count on her to attribute something like dry skin to an allergy. I'm willing to take her to someone else if this seems to be a problem. I just don't know if I'm overreacting! Maybe my babe just needs a little moisturizer? We only bath her once or twice a week, but she also goes into a pool and we (obviously) wash her face after eating. She also sometimes has dry skin on the back of her legs. Her poops are pretty consistent and normal. She's still heavily breastfeeding and she eats everything but nuts, egg whites, milk.

What do you think?

 

[Chinese Pistache]

Well, ime, there's probably some underlying allergies to a few different foods and as long as she's not overloaded on a number of them, her reactions stay low level (not suggesting that consuming allergens in small amounts is okay, just describing what I would guess is happening). If it was *just* the cheeks, I could say *maybe* dry skin, but if it's patches on the legs, too, that says allergy to me.

 

[tanyalynn]

I don't think people are supposed to have dry skin. If a cold, dry front comes through, sure, a couple days, but after that, I think something is off-balance in us. Foods are one place to look, definitely sounds possible, though it could be a more nuanced intolerance than many of the folks here experience. You may not see a reaction til you've had it enough, or a couple foods together are low-level intolerances. Or it could be some sort of nutritional imbalance, or fatty acids, or something like that. That's a pretty broad set of possibilities, I admit, but something to consider in case a food journal doesn't help.

 

[jennybean0722]

Our doc says that persistent dry skin on the legs IS a sign of allergies. We are getting allergy testing soon, have done the RAST already and the only thing that showed up was wheat! Go figure.

Jb

 

[deditus]

If you're posting here, than I say it's probably allergies. Mamas know, even if they don't want to.