Looking For Answers

Last Monday morning I noticed that Ryker had a little red welty spot on his face. It was gone within about 15 minutes so I didn't think much of it. It was probably just his skin being sensitive (poor kid get my terrible skin). When he woke up from his nap a few hours later he had two larger spots on his forehead (about the size of silver dollars). I was immediately worried. Brian reassured me that he was probably okay and just to watch him. Just like the spot early they were gone with the half hour.

Hours later we were running errands. Ryker was really upset as we were trying to make the last few stops...but that's not unusual, he doesn't care much for his car seat. The last stop was dinner. Jaxon and I went into Quizno's to get dinner while Brian stayed in the car with Ryker. We had only been in line for a minute or two when Brian came in holding Ryker. Ryker's entire face was covered in hives...he looked so swollen and miserable. I quickly grabbed Jaxon and we headed for the door. I insisted we go straight to Wee Care or the ER....I was a nervous wreck! Again Brian calmed me down and told me that they would just give him Benadryl and tell us to watch him. We stopped at Walmart and dosed him with Benadryl right there in the parking lot. The hives started improving within minutes.

We tried to think through the day to determine if he had eaten anything new, been exposed to anything. We couldn't think of anything.

The next two days were the same. None of the reactions were quite as bad as that first night, but he would still break out in hives. Nothing was consistent. We monitored the food he was eating. Nothing new and it didn't always end in hives. Sometimes he woke up with hives, sometimes he didn't. We moved him into our room to see if it was something in his room that was bothering him. We bought dye and fragrance free detergent and washed all of his clothes, blankets, stuffed animals. Still nothing.

The only change we could figure was that I had made wheat bread on Monday for the first time. Monday was the worst day and it was the day that I had my hands in the wheat dough. Monday and Tuesday I ate some of the bread. We knew that it would take a few days for the wheat to be out of my system. Brian broke open one of the wheat grains and put it on Ryker's back to test our theory. Sure enough, he got a hive right where the wheat had been.

We are going to the doctor tomorrow for Ryker's 9 month well-check visit. Hopefully the doc will give us some answers. I sure hope Ryker doesn't have a wheat allergy (wheat is in everything!) but I suppose it could be worse. I would like to have him go through some allergy testing to see if there are other allergies. I would hate for him to have a serious allergic reaction (anaphylactic shock or something) to something that could have been prevented.

This was taken on Wednesday. It was hard to get a good picture, but you can kind of see the hives on his cheek, arm, and neck.