Our sweet baby girl Savannah deals with quite a few challenges in her life that most of us wouldn’t know how to handle. For her – they’ve always been around. Since birth she has dealt with the issues of her food allergies and all the discomforts from that … and then there is her skin. Savannah also battles very severe eczema which causes her to constantly itch, have dry scabby skin, and very frequent inflamed sore spots. Sounds fun, right? 
In these next few posts I’m going to attempt to document our journey with discovering, learning about, and beginning to manage Savannah’s allergy & eczema struggles. It is a story that is definitely still being told. And a lot of learning is still in our future. But we often get asked questions about how we discovered her allergies & eczema and how we live with them. And I want to get this story out there so I can connect with and help anyone out there who might be lost and confused like I was in the beginning. So here it goes. 
We discovered Savannah had something unusual going on almost right away. Just a few days old she showed signs of the dreaded “colic” …fussiness and kicking her legs quite a bit like her belly hurt. I tried what felt like EVERYTHING…different nursing methods, sleep sound machines, swaddling, gas drops, Colic Calm, etc. Nothing resolved it for more than an hour. It was hard to say the least. Looking back on it now though – as I’ve since had another child who has been fairly easy and has no known allergies – I guess you could say I really didn’t know any better. All of the stress with nursing, the times she would choke so bad on her spit up she couldn’t breathe, the times her skin was so inflamed it was hot to the touch … this was all I ever knew! I hadn’t ever had an “easy” baby to compare this experience with since she was my first. All I knew was that I just wanted her to be happy and healthy.
At 8 weeks old she started to develop red little dots all over her torso and it spread up her neck onto her face. I read and read about “newborn rashes” and tried to tell myself this was just one of those rashes babies get from their new environments. But it started to get a little worse – she looked ALL red instead of just the little dots – and then her beautiful baby eyelids became so red and inflamed that she actually learned how to rub her eyes at 10 weeks old. (usually babies don’t have that kind of hand-eye coordination till much later)
And all the while this rash is going on …. she is spitting up like crazy, screaming and refusing to nurse, acting like her stomach is in knots, AND not gaining weight.
I was a nervous wreck. My motherly intuition was on red alert ALL DAY, EVERY DAY. I knew this wasn’t just “normal spit up” or “gas pains” or “the witching hours”…something serious was going on here!
This is about 8 weeks old. You can kind of see the redness in her elbow creases here and around her ankles.
Lots of redness around her eyes. I remember they felt hot to the touch.
Matt is such a wonderful dad. He does everything in his power to help his little girl.
Although she was so uncomfortable at this time – she was still a happy baby!
These aren’t some of the “best” pictures of her – but I wanted to provide you with some of the details of her skin conditions.
At one point, when she was almost 3 months old, I had hit a point of very real concern. Savannah had serious spit-up episodes that were so strong she would choke until she couldn’t breathe for a few seconds. I don’t know if you have ever seen someone choke but a few seconds feels like an eternity. It usually happened when she was lying down during a diaper change but had also happened in the middle of the night. I remember vividly one night I was feeding her and the room was almost pitch-black. But she started to choke and I could see the whites of her eyes were so big from fear and trying to catch her breath and her little body was flailing as she was fighting to breathe. I was hitting her on the back and saying “Breathe, baby, breathe” in a very fearful but calm voice. Matt heard me and woke straight up out of bed and just sat there with me saying “Breathe” … and then she would. And she would cry so loud. And I was so thankful for that loud cry.
I researched so much about this issue. I scoured the infant reflux forums out there trying to look for any cause for this awful issue. I stumbled upon various potential reasons like Sandifer Syndrome and pyloric stenosis…but there was nothing that I could pin-point as the problem. I remember calling my sister Danielle who had a 6 month old girl, Carmen, and asking her if she ever had these issues?? She didn’t. But she would try to make me feel better about it. And I would call my other sister Lauren who was studying to be a nurse and she would try to help me talk through it and make me feel better about it. But I think we all knew something wasn’t right.
So I put a call in to the pediatrician and talked to her about it. We had discussed this issue one other time at a check-up but she didn’t seem too concerned at the time. Now that it was happening frequently, she was a bit more worried. She immediately put in a prescription for Zantac which is an acid-reflux medicine and had me start giving that to her. (There could be a whole other blog post on the different acid-reflux medicines that we tried and different methods of giving them to her…but I will spare you…basically they didn’t work for us.) but then I pushed for something further called an “Upper GI test” that I learned about on a reflux forum which would basically be like an Xray to take a look at her digestive system and make sure it was fully functional.
I remember that day specifically – it was March 5, 2012. Matt stayed home from work to go with us. The procedure was pretty easy. She just drank a bottle of this barium stuff and we held her down flat on the table. I think the most intimidating part was the stone cold room and huge equipment that kind of freaked us all out. But in the end, I’m so glad I pushed for this test. Because we found out her body was functioning just fine and I got to see images of her little body and knew she had all the right things in all the right places.
But it still left us with no answers.
And then our worry continued when I took her in for her 3 month well-check at the doctor’s office and we realized she was not gaining weight. Actually she had lost a few ounces. I just wanted to cry. As a first time mom and only 3 months in – I felt like I was failing! I knew my precious baby was in pain and uncomfortable. I just wanted to fix it so badly!
As the doc was examining all the rashes, we talked about Matt’s history with eczema. You see – my husband had severe eczema growing up and although it doesn’t get inflamed anymore – he suffers from chronic dry skin still to this day. He also has an allergy to fish. We got to talking about possible food allergies and eczema and the doc agreed that something in my diet should be changed to start helping Savannah. We started with cutting out dairy as most people do as their first option when trying to sort through allergies and breastfeeding. I immediately cut out everything dairy – as hard as it was – but it paid off. She started to slowly improve. She wasn’t nearly as fussy, she would actually nurse without a fight, her skin was looking much less inflamed and most importantly – she never choked on spit-up again. I was so relieved to have found something that was finally helping her.
I continued my research about how to help a child with skin problems and possible food allergies. I loved seeing her feeling better and I wanted to keep learning more about how to manage it. Especially her skin. I just couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to itch all over constantly! I could not let it go.
Fortunately I found this forum called Babies and Children with Skin Problems (aka BCSP) on the Baby Center website. It is probably still the most frequent place I turn to for help with Savannah’s skin issues. This is where I’ve learned how to establish a skin care routine, which steroid creams to use, what household products and environmental situations to avoid, etc. Once I found this site I began to help Savannah even more.
But as time went on – I was still feeling like I was missing something. I had cut out dairy and established a fantastic, well-managed skin care routine for her (if you would like to know specifics on this – just let me know and I’m happy to share!). But we still had occasional flare-ups and issues with her digestive system. I knew I was missing something. All I could think was that maybe she had more than one food allergy?
We felt so lucky that we had discovered the issue with dairy ON THE FIRST TRY which is almost un-heard of. But she wasn’t yet “normal” and I knew the search wasn’t over. As a mother – you just know when something isn’t right, you know? Things got better with our first round of “treatment” but I had to do more for her.
It was so overwhelming thinking about the gazillion types of foods out there and how would I ever be able to find out what other food she might be allergic to. I read about this technique called the Elimination Diet. Have you ever heard of it? I don’t wish that nightmare on anyone! Then I thought maybe I could just cut out the Top 8 allergens and try that approach. Have you ever tried cooking everything from scratch with a newborn in the house? I don’t wish that on anyone either!
But I gave those diets a shot. And I struggled miserably! I don’t think I ever did it perfectly enough to make a difference. By this time she was almost 6 months old and her skin was very well-managed even with the occasional flare-up. So I made the decision to enjoy this time and give the allergy search a much-needed break.
A healthy, happy Savannah!
And then one day, while her one year old cousin Carmen was spending the day with us, WE HAD A BREAKTHROUGH.
But this post is already long enough.
So stay tuned.
If you have any questions or comments – I’d love to hear from you! 