Your Saliva On Pacifiers Can Ward Off Childhood Allergies, Asthma, & Eczema

 

In an article posted on Medical News Today, researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Sweeden, reported in the Journal Pediatrics (May 6th, 2013 issue) that cleaning your babies pacifier by sucking it, you may reduce your infant’s risk of developing allergies, asthma, and eczema!

You can read the article here

Cold & Allergy Induced Asthma

Like many kids with a peanut allergy, Bean has asthma also. I’m sure many of you can relate. Bean doesn’t have bad asthma, and typically only has asthma symptoms when she gets a cold.  My younger daughter can have a cold with a cough, and it’s no big deal.  However, when Bean gets that same cold from Bubbles, her cough sounds much worse and her cold induced asthma kicks in and she starts wheezing.

Everyone is saying allergies are REALLY bad this year, and we are experiencing this first hand. Bean has had a little cough for the last couple days, but this morning she had a congested cough and had that rumbly sound in her chest when she breathed in and out. She felt like she needed her rescue inhaler, and her breathing was a little labored. She also had a low grade fever of 99.8. I called her pediatrician, but they couldn’t get us in until later today. Based on how bad the cough sounded and the rumble noise she had going on when she breathed, I chose to take her to the urgent care a few blocks from our home.

They were fantastic and took her back right away. She was wheezing when the doc listened to her lungs. They put her on Prednisone for three days and Albuterol nebulizer treatments every 4-6 hours, with a recheck with her pediatrician on Monday. Although she has not had a bad cough and needed these meds in a long time, here we are back in this familiar boat. It has been so long that I was actually wondering if she had maybe outgrown this. Unfortunately, this is not the case. She has never suffered from allergy induced asthma before, so this is something a little different than before. She is regularly on Flovent, Flonase, and Singulair, but here we are anyway. We need to up her meds to 2 puffs of Flovent daily now, instead of just one.

They said that she most likely has been suffering from allergies, although her nose has not been running, but the doc said looking at her sinuses and the back of her throat she has been having drainage. 😦 Urgent care said they have been seeing a lot of people coming in with asthma issues this season, because allergy season is so bad this year, due to the extra long cold season we had, everything is popping at once making it worse than normal.

I just keep hoping she will outgrow this and we will be able to eventually reduce some of the meds she is on daily. In the meantime, we will just do what is necessary to keep her well.

The BEST Printable Allergy Action Plan

allergyactionform

For those of you who have or who have a child with an anaphylactic food allergies, or know someone who does, this is the most comprehensive form I have found out there.  It is from FARE (Food Allergy Research & Education).  I prefer this over the one my allergist gave my daughter, and others I have seen on the web.  I keep one of these with every Epipen my daughter has – my purse, her backpack, school nurse, and our take along bag.  It also has a spot to acknowledge if the allergic person has asthma or not (which would make their airway reaction much worse) AND what to do in case they do!  Most forms I have found do not cover this.

If you must carry an Epipen, then be sure to have one of these forms in there with it!

You can see the form by clicking here or going to http://www.foodallergy.org/document.doc?id=125