Hives

Wow, I'm *awesome* at updating this. Anyhow, Mia is broken out in hives. Again. I can't remember if I mentioned it before or if she was breaking out then, but Mia started breaking out in hives probably 4 weeks ago. We weren't sure what the issue was. So we stripped the bed and washed all her blankets, thinking maybe that was the issue. Nope. We started giving her Benadryl thinking that should help and it kinda did. After maybe a week of hives we took her to Med Plus (an after-hours med clinic). The doctor told us it wasn't detergent or soap causing it, but something she's eating or drinking. He listed off some common offenders, most of which she hadn't had. Cereal set off a light bulb. They had a new cereal that week. The doctor told me to give her Benadryl and told me the correct dose, so we did that and 86'ed the cereal. She mostly cleared up and we went to Tracy's for the weekend. She was fine. We got home and she broke out again. The doctor said it wasn't environmental...

Steve realized we gave her orange Powerade. And I remembered different people mentioning issues with red dye 40. We didn't have the bottle to check the ingredients but I did check the ingredient list for the cereal and bingo, there it was. Over the next few days, I started weeding out foods with red dye 40 - no fruit snacks, certain cereals and crackers are off limits. Luckily the juice, cereal bars, and most of the crackers and cereal were fine. But she wasn't clearing up completely. After giving her a dose of Benadryl one day before nap time, I looked down and realized the medicine is red...sure enough, it had red dye 40 in it. So we inadvertently were making her hives worse while trying to clear them up. I checked and it was in their toothpaste too. Good grief! I ended up going to the store that night to buy dye-free Benadryl and different toothpaste.

Since we bought the dye-free medicine, she cleared up. Awesome! Until Monday afternoon. I went back and checked everything I had fed her and no red dye listed anywhere. Tuesday they were still there. And today she's still covered in red spots. So rather than going to work today, when Kat gets here, I'm taking Mia to the doctor. The Med Plus doctor was able to tell me that with her very fair skin, she'll be sensitive to lots of things and prone to allergies. He said heat tends to make hives worse too, but we have AC. It does get warmer upstairs, which is where their bedroom is, but she's still breaking out. Maybe it's not the red dye 40. But we need to get this figured out. Luckily she doesn't seem very bothered by the hives but I hesitate to take her anywhere covered in red spots. We're trying to take care of it and she's not contagious, but no one else knows that. I was hoping cutting out the red dye 40 would solve the problem but it doesn't seem that it worked. Maybe we'll have to do allergy testing after all. But first things first - we're seeing one of the doctors in our practice today. I wish we were seeing *our* doctor but I trust the judgment of the other doctors in his practice too. Hopefully we'll get some answers.

On a side note, they're going to be very familiar with me there. I had Nora in last week for her 4 month well child check (she's 15 lbs 8 oz, 25.5 inches long, EXACTLY the same size Mia was at 4 mos) and I go in tomorrow for a physical (I have some concerns about my thyroid due to barely losing weight despite working out regularly and counting calories for months). I am so glad we have good insurance!