Pregnancy, Allergies and Children

Pregnancy Over 40, Allergies and How It May Affect Your Children

I've always been worried that my daughter would inherit my husband's allergies. One weekend, we went to my sister's house and my daughter broke out in a major case of hives when she came in contact with her cat.
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She's been around the cat before, but I've heard that some allergies don't manifest themselves until 2-3 exposures. Anyway, now I'm also wondering if her excema (which she's had for a couple of years now) is somehow related to a food allergy (like dairy).

It's so hard to prevent allergies because you don't know what they're going to be allergic to. Here is an article about childhood allergies and some things you could try even while pregnant or breastfeeding:

Prevention of Allergies and Asthma in Children
From Daniel More, MD (allergies.about.com)

PREVENTING ALLERGIES IN PREGNANCY

Allergies in babies and kids

I recall my OB doctor telling me that eating peanut butter during pregnancy could possible predispose my baby to nut allergies, but I did eat quite a bit of it.I don't want to minimize the danger of severe allergic reactions, but according to the article below, maybe we are going a little overboard.
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 My daughter does seem to have quite a few food allergies, she gets hives, but gets over it. As time goes on, and she tries more foods, we find more and more things she's allergic to. Fortunately, she doesn't have a peanut allergy because she practically lives on peanut butter. I found this article amusing if nothing else - and it certainly is "food for thought". Read more:

A study of Jews of similar demographics and genetics in Britain and Israel found that British kids were 10 times more likely to have peanut allergies than Israelis. That's probably because Israeli kids have other things to be afraid of. I would like to see a study that measures one's increased likelihood of peanut allergies if you're an American kid named Oliver, Aidan, Spencer or Finn.

Parents may think they are doing their kids a favor by testing them and being hyper-vigilant about monitoring what they eat, but it's not cool to freak kids out. Only 20% of kids who get a positive allergy test result need treatment. And a 2003 study showed that kids who were told they were allergic to peanuts had more anxiety and felt more physically restricted than if they had diabetes. "It's anxiety-producing to imagine that having a snack in kindergarten could be deadly," Christakis said. Remember, this is a demographic so easily panicked that, equipped with only circles and dots, it invented an inoculation to cooties.

A few years ago, I was at a bar without food, so I started downing peanuts. Around the third bowl, I started coughing and felt this itchiness in the back of my throat, which I quickly treated with beer. Still, for a few minutes, I was convinced that a peanut allergy was about to kill me. If the beer had not made me forget the incident, I might have avoided nuts for the rest of my life. Or, worse, bored everyone at the table with my questions about nut allergies.

So bring back nuts to schools. If parents need to panic about a food, at least go with seafood allergies. Those fish sticks are disgusting.(www.latimes.com)