Keeping a food journal can be a great place to start! Keeping written down what your little one has eaten and drank for the day can help narrow down food triggers. This can get difficult when your little one has a delayed response that could be days later. Something our oldest eats you know right away he’s allergic his eyes will start to swell or his eczema will get red and inflamed! Our youngest had mucus poops and delayed responses. In keeping with your food journal I found it helpful to take photos of flair-ups and write down other symptoms. This will help when looking back or showing a specialist. I have brushed off time and time again about the  mucus in his poop, this is a sign of an allergy free to feed and has a great photo library of what to be looking for. There are great food journals on Etsy. Mama if your breastfeeding keep a food journal for your self as well!! Free to Feed is an amazing resource for Littles with allergies and breastfeeding! Don’t throw in the towel on breastfeeding if you aren’t ready!

You suspect a food allergy or god forbid your little one has an anaphylactic response to food, now what? You have the option to run some tests! Around 7 months of age our oldest had his first anaphylactic response to dairy. ER referred us to an allergy specialist. From there we saw quite a few. Ran blood work and did skin testing. The blood work is awful having a little one get an iv. After all that trouble they tested minimally. Running a few top allergens and only for igG. I personally was not impressed by this my son still had horrible eczema and this Information didn't help us much. Back again to another specialist, we tried a skin prick test. Again little info and a lot of discomfort for my little one. Months and months later I found precision point diagnostics they offer an allergy test that tests for 84+ foods. In one test they test for IgE, IgG, and IgG4, these can fall under sensitivities. Once we had our results back it was crazy what our oldest had been eating every day and was allergic to no wonder his poor skin was so inflamed. I worked within a restricted diet for the first month and a half for him and me and then opened things up a little once we had a big portion of his inflammation gone he could tolerate more foods! We have yet to retest but will be doing so soon! babies and toddlers have big shifts in their immune systems as they grow, and this can play into how their bodies may tolerate some allergies. Just because the first two types of testing were not helpful to us in our journey doesn't mean they couldn't be for you! It's always good to have more info