Allergy Tips Tuesday- Spring Cleaning!!

Some of the most common indoor allergens -- the ones that can trigger childhood

allergy symptoms -- are often found in bedrooms. 


I was surprised to find many articles about how to keep a child with allergies
room in tip top shape. I have always been more worried about our living room
and what lurks in our carpet, which is important too. But then it occurred to 
me that our son does sleep in his room for 10 hours every night! Wow probably 
I should pay a little closer attention to his bed. 


There are so many articles that are EXTREME in my opinion about how
to keep a child's room with allergies clean. One gave detailed step by step 
instructions on how to clean the sheets, blankets, comforters, duvet covers, 
pillows, and on and on. It was quite amazing to me. I myself have been
caught in the trap of freaking out with the littlest exposure for our son.
If you have done anaphylaxis or have done an asthma exacerbation, you
want to steer clear of doing it again. But I have come to find there has to
be a happy medium where my son is safe  and I am not being crazy lady.


Our son is allergic to 35 things that we are aware of in the areas of food,
drugs and environmental allergens. It can be very overwhelming if I 
think about it too much. So I just do my best to steer clear of things
knowing that I can not always keep him away from all of them and 
trying to keep him away from the BIG ones. 


That being said I have found that his room can cause issues. So
there are a few things you can do to keep the room a little more
allergen free. First, put a mattress cover on the mattress. We had
already done this because he was a toddler and still having the 
occasional night accident. Mattresses harbor all kinds of horrible
things that no one really wants to think about!! Dust mites being
one of the big ones. Next get a allergy safe pillow cover. We bought
our son a special allergy safe pillow and cover. They are really not
that expensive and when you think about it, that is where their face
is going to be. Lastly, you need to be washing the bed linens once 
a week. I am not that great about this in the off seasons. Usually April
to June is our son's worst time of year and I work hard during
that time to keep all linens clean. Obviously dusting and vacuuming 
are two other important things. But I think the bed is the big
issue because they spend 8-10 hours a night there and it needs to
be a place of comfort and a place that does not cause them to have
a full blown allergy attack.


Lastly, one interesting tip I read that I had not really thought about,
because we don't have bunk beds, many suggest putting the allergy
kid on the top bunk. When the dust and allergens falls, it will not be 
on the allergic one as much.


Any other tips? Chime in and let me know what you think!

Child Allergy Topics: Food Allergy Awareness Week

There was a time in my life, before kids, when I made fun of that
nerdy little boy or girl who appeared to be mothered to death
by their mom because of their "food allergies". HAHAHAHA and
now look at me!! I am the mother, mothering my child to death 
because of his "Food Allergies". You don't realize how crazy it is
until you try it!! But because I am a mom of a child with Severe
Food, Drug and Environmental allergies, I want to get the word
out there about what it is like to live in our world.


This week is food allergy awareness week sponsored by a group
called FAAN- The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network! I just
received an e-mail from this group last week and until then I had 
never heard of them before. Their goal this week is to get as much
information out to the public as they can about food allergies. 
They have a lot of info aimed at helping parents get information
into their schools about what it is like to have allergies and what
we do about it in our homes. Let's face it sometimes kids can be
mean when someone else is different. But once we give them
education and open up a discussion, they feel more at ease. 


FAAN has on their site something that I absolutely Love!!
A Myths page!! It addresses a lot of topics that people have
questioned me about and questions that I have asked our allergist.
That page can be found here:
http://www.foodallergy.org/page/myths?

I highly recommend the FAAN site to everyone who wants to know
more about Food Allergies. It is a helpful site for me as well because
they are not just about education but they also take part in research
to help people who live with allergies. 


We have come to a time when we all will come in contact with 
someone who has food allergies. Why not get educated and learn
more about what it means to have food allergies?

Child Allergy Topics: Allergy Shots

As our son has gotten older, his environmental allergies

and asthma have become more of an issue. While we are 

continually taking measures in the home to make the air

better for him, we know that allergy shots will be in his 

future. His allergist says that the youngest he will do 

shots on children is age 5. But he says that the most 

difficult group to do shots in is 5 year old boys and our 

son is a 5 year old boy. So we have some time before we will 

really consider it. Once we decide to do this it is a big 

commitment for us because we will have to drive about 90-95 

miles round trip 2 times a week for 6-8 weeks for him to get

his shots. This is just the initial phase. The shot process 

can last years!! SO the question is, is it worth it?

I was reading today about allergy shots just because I want

to be educated on them once we decide to go forward with 

them. I found an article that really helped me.  One thing I

read really stood out to me and that was allergy shots 

decrease the risk of developing asthma by 50%. They also

decrease the risk for developing new allergies. While our

son already has asthma, this statistic is encouraging. With

the number of known allergens he is allergic to being 25 and I

know that there is more, this means we could slow or halt new

ones being added. Also his asthma could become less of a 

problem. 

When our son gets sick it is not like when other kids

get sick. A simple cold bring nebulizer treatments and 

steroids around the clock. Lots of missed school days and 

lots of doctors visits for asthma attacks that we are having 

difficulty getting under control. Often we wonder is this 

going to be the time he gets admitted. We are more than 

blessed that he has never been admitted but this last cold 

brought us the closest we have ever been. This cold season 

has by far been the worst he has ever had. He has been 

treated for Pneumonia 3 times since January. We had not 

done nebulizer treatments since he was 15 months old. Since

February we have gone through approx. 70 albuterol ampules. 

The information I have read looks very promising and while

it will be a huge commitment it seems like the price is worth

the gain. I know that after this cold and flu season we would

pay a great price to see him not suffer. 

What about you? Any experience with allergy shots? Tell me

what you think!!

Weekly Allergy Topic: Carpet vs. Hardwood or Laminate

Have you ever vacuumed at that time of the day when the sun is going down and you

can see all the particulate in the air flying around? You would not normally see

this if it were say around noon. The perfect angle of the sun allows you to see 

the nightmare that is sitting in your carpet now floating in the air.

Almost one year ago our son was diagnosed with a multitude of environmental

allergies. The majority of which live in our yard. In addition to his food and drug 

allergies this brought his count of things, that he is allergic to, that we know about,
to 25.  I know that there is more. So naturally we started looking for ways to 
decrease the allergens in the home. Primarily his sleeping area. So I bought a 
special pillowcase and he has a mattress cover. We bought a rainbow
vacuum and carpet cleaner which is also a air purifier. I try to clean the carpets in his 
room 2 times a year. I have read recommendations that you should clean your carpets 
every 12-16 months!! WHAT??!!! Do these people have children or even live in their houses?

The building of our house started when I was 8 months pregnant with our son and we 
have had a daughter as well. We had the option to have the majority of the house 
tiled but we opted out because of course you worry about babies learning to walk on 
hard floors. If we only knew then what we know now. This has been the most difficult 
year we have had with our son as far as asthma goes. And so we are thinking about 
putting laminate in the majority of the house. The tile that we do have has been difficult
to keep up and so I don't really want more of it. 

So I have been on a research trek to find out what people are saying about carpet vs 
laminate. The nurse part of me has looked at actual research articles and the mom 
part has looked at blogs and forums. The two worlds have not been in agreement.
The research world says that carpet now days is made to hold more allergens. They
compared the USA which is a big carpet country to Europe which is not. They say they
found no difference in reports of difficulty of allergies. This was the same report that
said to only clean carpets every 12-18 months unless you had a stain, mud, etc. My
mom brought up an excellent point about this research and that is how often were
each types of flooring cleaned. This was not part of the study.


The mom, forum, blog world says that it can be a huge benefit to have the laminate or
hardwood because you can see the allergens sitting on your floor and you know that
you are getting them all up. Several post I read said that while the carpet does hold 
allergens more as soon as some one stomps or children run around, the allergens get
stirred up. I have definitely seen this to be true.The down side of the laminate is really 
you need to vacuum or wet mop pretty much every day. My friend who had laminate
said that yes it is a pain to clean everyday BUT she would absolutely have it over carpet
any day. Let's face it, carpet has it's moments of not being user friendly.


So what do you think? We are really leaning towards it. It is easy to install, 
it looks great, and I just think I would feel good about being able to see the clean. 

Child Allergy Topics-Eczema

Mondays I have decided will be devoted to Allergy Topics because both of our children have allergies to some extent. So mondays will be a time I research and talk about topics I have discussed with other parents and if you have any questions or topics you would like me to explore please send me a message.
 Allergies is our life. If you know our family or have met us, you know we face this issue moment to moment at our house and have been doing so since our son was 5 months old. I have decided to explore Eczema as my first topic this week because it was the first sign for both of our children and I know it is the first sign in many children. When our son was born, he had so many newborn skin issues. As an OB nurse I know that newborns have skin issues because they are going from a wet environment to a dry one. Their skin is adjusting. But after time they will start to have that sweet soft smooth baby skin. Our Seth did have that sweet soft smooth baby skin for about 2 weeks. Then I noticed a patch of dry red skin on the middle of his chest. Then it was his cheeks. Then all of his body. When we saw our pediatrician she said it was "just" eczema and just to lotion him up. But that was no comfort as he just got worse and worse. My sister-in-law was dealing with the same thing in her son who was 2 months older. Consequently we were seeing the same pediatrician but they decided to take our nephew to a new provider and he was diagnosed with allergies. 
  I have met several people who say about their child's eczema "They just have eczema" (and I am primarily writing this because a dear friend is starting to think her daughter may have allergies and you know who you are. I have heard her say this to me.) So I did some research because our allergist has said to me that there is a huge correlation between eczema and allergies but I wanted to know what other parents have been told about eczema.
  I have seen multiple chat forums where exactly what I am talking about has occurred. Where a mother was told by her pediatrician that her child "just" had eczema but then saw a allergist and they said there was a huge correlation between the two. I have read and heard time after time that allergists will tell you there is a huge correlation between onset of eczema and allergies. I have also read and seen that this is particularly true with egg, milk and peanut allergies.

  This was true for us. We finally saw a pediatrician who knew about allergies and when we finally did our son was extremely sick. He was 4 months old and he had an infection of his skin all over his body. Severe eczema and little crusty areas in the crevices of his elbows, behind his knees, around his ankles and behind his ears. We established care with an allergist and it was determined that Seth was highly allergic to Eggs, Milk, and Peanuts. He was mild to moderately allergic to wheat and Soy. This list has expanded to 25 foods, drugs and environmental things that he is allergic to. Once we started taking the things he was allergic to out of his body (unfortunately because his list was so extensive I had to stop breastfeeding) his skin immediately starting looking better and better. Is it that cut and dry? No. Seth still has flare ups especially when the seasons change. He gets patches behind his knees. But I know how he would look if he ate whatever he wanted. It makes a huge difference.
 What does this mean for you and your child? I think if your kiddo has eczema, it is definitely worth the testing. Because the more a child is exposed to what they are allergic to the worse the reaction is going to get. If you get testing and find out that it is "just" eczema, and no they don't have allergies, Yeah!! But if they do, then this means you can help them.