Emma is now on a allergy med/atarax

[Anonymous]

Well I took Emma to the GI last Friday. I didn’t get to see the one I usually see b/c she had an emergency so we seen another one. She put Emma on an allergy med/atarax (i hope that is how you spell it). I had spoke to her original GI doc about it at our last visit but she didn’t put her on it then. Emma just got over a ear infection and she says her ear is better and she is going on 2 months of not eating. She will eat a few bites of junk food occasionally, but her diet is primary Alimentum. i had mentioned previous that her ped wanted me to change her formula to Elecare because she is still very gassy and for the add’l calories & nutrients. The GI said she was still in the 25 percentile so lets not worry about that yet, lets worry about why she is so cranky all the time. For the past week and a half she is very cranky, irratible, crys over everything. She is not sick, she is not teething (we thought she was but the GI said she couldn’t find anything). The GI said that they have been doing a lot of research and said that the bugs per say that you get when you are allergic to grass or pollen you can also get in your GI tract from foods that you are allergic too. We tried a hidden dairy trial a while back and she had a delayed reaction of ezcema and severe gas and her thinking is her GI is still down from that (and from the flu she had about 1.5 – 2 months ago.) and she needs a allergy med to get her GI tract back to normal. Has anyone heard of this? She has been on it since Friday and I have not seen any improvement, still very cranky. Should I wait longer?

I almost think now we should do some testing, she has never had anything done. Has anyone had testing done for the same reasons? basically we are getting worse at 14 months. Does anyone have some input, I would greatly appreciate it, I don’t know what to do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

btrue2006-5-17 14:42:1

[Anonymous]

Hi Brandy, I do not have any experience/advice about the allergy med. but I wanted to share that Seth is also in the 20th percentile for weight. At his 12 month, the ped. nor his GI were worried about this. The GI even said we could drop formula altogether and go to all rice milk. I am keeping him on Alimentum twice daily though just for the fat and protein. He is a good eater though so I would not recommend this for Emma but maybe you could try to give her a little rice milk on top of the Alimentum? It is a good source of calcium which they do need lots of now and Seth loves it (we use the Vanilla flavor).

I am sorry you are having a set back. Although Seth does eat, his reflux really relapsed around Emma’s age. It seemed to be under control (where we were even thinking we could come off of the PPI) but then he started to reflux almost every night. It is so discouraging….

Hang in there and I hope Emma improves soon!

[Anonymous]

Thank you for responding, I appreciate it! My GI doesn’t want me to switch to Rice milk b/c it lacks in so many nutrients but I never thought of adding it in addition to Alimentum, that is a good idea. Her GI just switched her to a different allergy med, periactin, b/c the atarax didn’t seem to do anything and this med is supposed to help increase your appetite. I really hope it does. Thanks for the encouragement!!

[Anonymous]

very interesting take on the whole environmental allergy/GI connection. i will ask our allergist when dd goes in for her routine check up. ds already saw her so i missed that opportunity to ask

we do have experience with atarax but for dd. she has eczema that was worse a year or two ago. she still has it but has improved.

anyway the allergist put her on atarax in order to get her to not scratch since she had gotten to the point where even a bit of tears streaming down her face would make her eczema spots blaze red.

as far as i know the atarax is really mainly to calm the itchyness so that they don’t make the spots worse. it has a mild sedative effect so we would give it at night.

i believe we saw results about a week after starting it.

how long has she been on the probiotic? i have read that it really helps with eczema and of course with digestion. i would think that the probiotic would help her little out of whack GI system more than atarax.

sadly at 14 months the allergy testing isn’t all that reliable but i think it could still answer some questions. i remember the ped really pushing us to wait until dd was 3 before testing for allergies, so that we had a better chance of a reliable result.

with ds they did do testing at 1 yr and we got a mild reaction to one food. then at 2 yrs we got a reaction to an environmental allergy test. i think the allergist just went ahead with testing ds early on because we had dd giving us a link to proof of allergies in the family

anyway, a skin test is painless and not terribly inconvenient, it may help you quite a bit.

do you suspect maybe some intolerances to maybe gluten or casein or anything else? maybe her crankyness is due to something as subtle as that.

i wish i had fabulous wise words and a best path to take but i guess what i am trying to say is that if you have the reflux meds at the right dose, the probiotics have been in place, then definitely hit the allergy testing or looking for intolerances with more attention

[Author]

Posts