Hello all,
My almost 6 mo. old Kylie has sinus infection after sinus infection brought on by allergies. I believe they are environmental as it is always when a cold front comes through and/or when the rest of the family is sneezing their head off too. She rubs her nose/eyes, has watery eyes, sneezes over and over and gets the shiners too. It doesn't and never has coincided with any food-although I could always be wrong of course. She's been referred to her sister's ped. allergist who I love. What testing, if any, can I expect on one so young? Anyone else have this at this age?
Her sister has just begun allergy shots after finally seeing this ped. allergist. The previous one kept telling me she was sick because she was in school. :favorites60:

Allergy testing in children under the age of 4 is notoriously unreliable. Your observations are the best gauge at this age. My daughter suffers terribly from pollen allergies year-round (we live in a warm climate where something is always growing), and we treat her symptoms as they occur. She also has chronic sinusitis from reflux and allergies. I hope to get her started on a daily allergy med at her 15mo check-up. My 10 1/2yo son has been taking daily allergy meds since he was a year old, and he still suffers quite a bit when the pollen count is high. www.pollen.com is one of our best friends, lol!

At 6 mos, testing might not be as accurate, environmental allergies manifest themselves differently than food allergies though. Also, food allergies can cause the same kinds of problems environmental allergies can cause as well.

The testing that they can do is blood work on infants to look for allergies. They may not always be able to show what the child is allergic to but look for markers in the immune system. I have two kids that were found to be symptomatic this way.

I do know that the skin testing is not reliable in children this young. Our ped allergist treated my children with meds because of their symptoms. I also found out that two of my kids were allergic to foods which we really didnt know because nevers showed any real symptoms to the foods. I do wish you luck and hope that you can get some answers.

Melanie

Thanks everyone for the great information! I've introduced new foods carefully and they haven't shown any real symptoms that glare out at me anyway. But then again, they didn't with my oldest either....