In October Hamish landed up in hospital because he could not breathe, was wheezing and had what looked like a bad chest infection which honestly had developed within a few short hours.
We had been happily picking strawberries one moment and by the time we got home I had a child crying that he could not breathe.
I wrote about our hospital trip at the time.
What resulted was us discovering, through a weekend hospital stay and some allergy tests, that Hamish had quite a severe dust mite allergy.
His allergy won’t be cured, but with proper care we can control them.
As a mom with a newly diagnosed child I read as much as I could about allergies and allergens and found many of my questions regarding the myths of allergies answered at Premier Allergy
What is an allergy?
Allergies are caused by the body’s reaction to substances called allergens. These allergens trigger the immune system to react to harmless substances they believe are harming the body.
When to suspect an allergy?
According to Healthy children the symptoms of an allergy can present themselves as one or several of the following :
- Repeated or chronic cold like symptoms that last longer than 2 weeks
- Runny nose
- Nasal stuffiness
- Sneezing
- Throat clearing
- Nose rubbing
- Eye rubbing
- Sniffling
- Snorting
- Itchy eyes
- Running eyes
- Itching or tingling sensations in the mouth or throat
- Coughing
- Wheezing
- Difficulty in breathing and other respitory symptoms
- Recurrent red, itchy, dry or flaky rashes in the creases of the skin. In particular the wrists and ankles.
Common Allergens in the home
Some of the more common allergens that can affect an allergy can be found in your home.
They include:
- Dust – Dust contains dust mites and fine particles from other allergens.
- Fungi – These include mould that is too small to be seen with the naked eye.
- Fury animals – most animals with long hair set off allergies. Pets like dogs, cats, rabbits, Guinea pigs, ect
- Clothing – Clothing made with animal hair, like sheep or alpaca wool, can irritate allergies.
- Toys – The same applies to toys. Knitted toys and plush toys store dust and these can agrivate an allergy.
- Latex – several people can have a reaction to latex in household products like gloves, erasers, balloons, toys and the elastic in socks and underwear.
- Bacterial enzymes – These are often used to make household cleaning products.
- Foods – Certain foods can trigger Allergies, with one of the most common being nuts.
How to control allergy symptoms
One of the first things our paediatrician outlined was how we could control our environment to make it safer for Hamish.
Dust mites congregate in areas where they can find the most food for themselves. As they live off flakes of human skin, they are commonly found in beds, couches, carpets, ect
For us this meant investing in waterproof matress protectors and pillow case protectors .
I vaccume his bed matress and planks every second day and as we have carpets I vacuume our home daily.
We threw out the soft toys, only keeping 2 or 3 favourites. We also wash his toys weekly and vacume things like teepees and tents.
If he plays outside I’m sure to wash his hands often and we always have allergex in the fridge.
We use a humidifier to keep the air clean but airconditioners are best as they reduce your exposure to pollen.
Mostly we listened to the advice of our paediatrician, and 3 months down the line i’m happy to say we seem to be able to keep his allergies under control.
For further information Premier Allergy and the Allergy foundation of South Africa have wonderful resources and articles on allergens and allergies.
This year saw Hamish’s love of dinosaurs grow as he learnt more names and facts. As we read more books, watched more documentaries and visited more fossils. So many moments include a dinosaur I have to add one of my favourite photos of Hamish and his dinosaur as my last photo choice.
2019 held so many highlights for Fun mamma SA and our sister Facebook page Mamma & Bear.From appearing on the Expresso show, attending fabulous events and representing amazing brands that we have come to love and trust.With a blog readership growth of 110% and tripling the social media platforms growth, I took a break before Christmas to rest and plan the wonderful content I hope to share with you throughout 2020.
For me though a break often means I need to get back into the habit of writing daily content.As they say, a habit takes 21 days to form, and I find if I don’t write daily , I often lose the flow of my writing.So, even though it was only a two week break, I decided to join the Ultimate Blog challenge.If you are a blogger and never done a 30 day challenge, allow me to explain. Every day of the month an email is sent to my inbox with some blogging ideas or tips to assist me to build my craft and blog.Every day, using the blogging ideas I write a post on my own blog which I am then able to share with you the reader, my own blogging and reader networks, social media platforms and most importantly a blogging community of like minded bloggers all participating in the same challenge.We then get the opportunity to read the other blogs and offer comments.
For me this is the perfect discipline to start my New year, keep me writing daily, learn from other bloggers and enhance my skills.So, in addition to my normal blogging this month you can expect an extra post as I follow this blog challenge.I hope you’ll follow along.
Once the spiral was formed, I made 24 faint marks to mark out where each bead would bead to be inserted.
I wrapped some of our fir tree leaves around a candle using an elastic band to keep it in place and this became the centre of the spiral to represent Christmas day and the birth of Jesus.
Lastly I made the Christmas nativity charactes.
To make Mary, Joseph and the donkey I took two Angels off our tree and cut the hair of one to represent Mary and Joseph.
