I’ve been closely following Flip Flop Girl’s food allergy mystery involving her toddler, Sienna. Sienna’s about 5 months older than Allie, and has eczema flare-ups and other skin reactions to various foods, and Flip Flop Girl, along with their team of pediatricians, have been trying to isolate the specific food items that are causing the reactions. Good thing her 3-year-old son Kyden has been logging all this stuff down in his blog! 🙂 I’m learning a lot.

Yesterday evening, Mr. W and I took Allie to Claim Jumper restaurant for dinner, and while I always bring her containers of homemade babyfood with us to restaurants, she’s starting to eat some tablefoods, so when I saw the big bowl of mashed up hard-boiled egg at the salad bar, I thought, Hmm. I was holding off introduction of egg, as previous AAP recommendation is that egg white is allergenic so to avoid egg altogether for the first 10 months (I think), then only introduce egg yolk, and then after the first year, egg white as well. But Allie’s pediatrician had said that AAP recently changed their guidelines and introduction of the two together is now okay. Allie doesn’t seem to have had reactions to foods so far, and I know that college roommie Diana has started feeding her baby (2 weeks younger than Allie) hard-boiled egg yolk, so I thought I’d give it a try.
But I’d learned some stuff from Kyden’s blog.
So first, I rubbed a piece of rubbery hard-boiled egg white on Allie’s forearm. She was sitting in the high chair, self-feeding on some baby puffs, and she stopped what she was doing after I rubbed the egg on her, looked at me with the oddest concerned look on her face, sucking in her lower lip so that her mouth formed a straight line. She looked at her arm where traces of yellow egg yolk powder could be seen. Then she looked at me again. “What the heck did you do that for?” she seemed to think at me. Then she looked at her arm again.
There was no reaction whatsoever on her skin, so I put a few clumps of yellow yolk on her baby spoon and offered to her. She opened her mouth trustingly. There was no expression change as she seemed to mash the yolk on her tongue. I offered her the sippy cup, she sipped, pointed at me, grunted, “Uggh!” So I fed her some more yolk. She ate it as if she were eating any of her food. When we were out of egg yolk, she went back to her puffs. And nothing happened. So I guess she’s not allergic to eggs.

But she does seem to be reacting to SOMEthing. Pretty much since her first weeks out in the world, her ankle wrinkles have been red with occasional patches of dryness on it. The pediatrician said it was just dry because her foot’s always flexed, it’s not eczema or anything. He said to just put Aquaphor on it twice a day, as with her then-bumpy section on her neck rolls. The tiny bumps (it looked like heat reaction) on her neck rolls went away, and then her neck rolls went away altogether, and I’ve stopped using Aquaphor on her neck. However, the ankle thing stuck around. She doesn’t seem bothered by it, and when I touch it to apply the Aquaphor, she doesn’t draw her feet back or seem to think it’s itchy, and a second pediatrician said it was just dry skin, so I haven’t been concerned with it. I kept hoping she’d outgrow it once she started not flexing her foot, but she didn’t. And then 2 nights ago, the spots got ANGRY.

What the heck is that? Both ankles are red and patchy in blotches, and her left ankle actually grew stuff that looked like tiny blisters.

These photos are taken the morning after, when the ankles are much better, but the blisters are still present. Simultaneously, she got a rare case of diaper rash. So the 2 nights her ankles were worst, were the same nights we saw a widespread diaper rash. She still didn’t react much to contact with the affected areas; we applied Desitin to the diaper rash, and Aquaphor to the ankles. Anytime she seems to have a flare-up of something (which we normally discover when we change her as we prepare to put her down to bed for the night), it clears by up morning, altho it may recur by the next evening. Such was the case this time, but the only new thing in her diet was string beans, and I can’t imagine a reaction to that. Nevertheless, I eliminated string beans the 2nd day, and the issues were still there, so I reintroduced string beans.

What I also did was buy some tea tree oil antiseptic lotion at a local organic food grocery store, and applied that to her ankles. Now all the redness is gone, and the ankles have gone back to just patchy dryness where the skin looks almost like post-burn or post-scab skin, and the blisters have dried up. We’ve asked Missy to apply a protective organic butt balm to Allie during diaper changes, and we’ve continued use of Desitin, and the diaper rash has not recurred.

The baby stuff is pretty puzzling. If anyone knows or suspects what the ankle stuff is, I welcome suggestions.

Meanwhile, here’s Allie being held by my dad last weekend, spotting a plane overhead.