Hives

Typically Abby does not like to have her back rubbed or scratched. She gets annoyed with me when we're sitting together on the couch and I start playing with her hair. So a million warning bells should have gone off when she parked herself in front of me and told me her back was itchy would I scratch it. So I gave her a quick run over her shirt with my fingernails and returned to what I was doing. "Mommy, my back is still itchy can you scratch it again?" I did this a couple of more times before I thought to check under her shirt.



Holy Hannah, what the hell is this? (Well an allergic reaction of some sort, genius.) One of my bigger concerns is that the kids will develop allergies. Mike has a fatal shellfish allergy and the girls are at a higher risk to "inherit" that allergy, but I try to be careful across the board. Abby does have a sensitivity to bug bites so I was lucky to have allergy medication on hand. For once I managed to get her to take medicine with no argument and in a little while the hives went away and she wasn't itchy anymore. But then came the bigger question. What in the hell had triggered it. As Mike and I discussed what she had eaten recently nothing really jumped out at me. She hadn't had peanut butter or shellfish, (we don't keep any in the house obviously) two of the biggies. Hmmm, what could it be.

The next morning Abby is still hive free, but shortly after breakfast she comes to me complaining again about being itchy. The hives are back. Another dose of allergy meds and the hives are gone. Later that evening as we were sitting at the kitchen table you could almost see the hives coming out all over her face. Now she's already had a dose of a 24 hour allergy medication which makes me more than a bit nervous.



In no time her whole face is one great big red hive. Mike and I seriously start making lists of what she has eaten in the past couple of days. There are two constants; pizza and popsicles, but I'm leaning towards the tomato sauce on the pizza. It was the last thing she had eaten before this latest outbreak.

Then as quickly as it had all began it ended. I did do a pizza food trial. I was really hoping she was becoming allergic to pizza. They have pizza day once a week at school and I'd hate for her to have to miss out on it. Not to mention it is literally her favourite food. Every night she asks if we're having pizza for dinner. I couldn't imagine having to explain to her she couldn't eat it anymore. So I fed her some pizza after she'd been hive free for a couple of days and there was nothing. No itchiness, no hives. I have yet to try the popsicles, but I might on the weekend so we're both at home in case she does break out. Of course it's likely that whatever caused it was a fluke and it won't happen again.