Toddlers/Children with seasonal or pet allergies

How did you know your child had allergies?
DS for the past 4 days has been itching his eyes, nose and ears like crazy he is telling me he has a bug in his ear. We have dogs and cats but we have had them since birth. He is 18 months old just got over an ear infection and also is put on an inhaler every time he gets a cold because it moves right to his chest ( not sure if that's helpful)

Re: Toddlers/Children with seasonal or pet allergies

For us it was the constant runny nose, sneezing, tugging ears. That was on TOP of her normal and constant ear infections.

Finally the pediatrican said "allergies" oh well there ya go! Not seasonal per se, not animals (i have two cats) just average daily whimsical allergies.

Children's Claritin helps control it for us. Zyrtec did nothing for her at all.

Re: Toddlers/Children with seasonal or pet allergies

We found out DS was both allergic to our cat and had seasonal allergies at around 18mos old.

For the cat, it presented as a constant drip, that the ped first wrote off as nasal drip, which then lead to a constant cough.

For the seasonal allergies, his eyes get swollen, red and itchy and he breaks out in hives where ever pollen has touched his skin. The hacking cough returns.

Due to his seasonal allergies, he has what is called Cough Variant Asthma, which is an allergy induced asthma, that presents as a cough. He is on a nebulizer as needed for that.

Re: Toddlers/Children with seasonal or pet allergies

Re: Toddlers/Children with seasonal or pet allergies

We found out that DS is allergic to cats after he had an anaphylactic reaction to peanut butter. We went in for allergy testing and came back with peanuts, treenuts, eggs and cats.

He does tend to itch his eyes a lot, he gets eczema rashes and often has a drippy nose. The Dr. didn't tell us to get rid of the cats (although she did say we may want to consider it in the future if the allergy is very bothersome to DS). She did tell us to keep them out of his room, wash all fabrics in HOT water and bathe the cats weekly. She also said leather furniture is best, but replacing all of our furniture isn't in the budget right now so we bought slip covers that can be washed weekly.