The Hives, and the Month We Waited
2026-08-03 · Warren, founder of Hey Susan · 4 min
This is a personal story, not medical advice. Allergic reactions vary a lot from kid to kid, and what happened to our son is not a guide for what will happen to yours. If any of this sounds like your situation, please call your own pediatrician or allergist, not a blog post.
It was a food pouch. Flax seed, beets, apple. He'd had apple before with no issue at all, but the flax seed and the beets were both new to him, and one of those turned out to be the problem.
My wife noticed it first, the way she usually does. He was scratching more than usual, and fussier than usual, in a way that didn't have an obvious reason behind it. By the time I got to him, his face was flushed and a little swollen, and hives were spreading, from his face down to his body, his legs, his tummy, his arms. No trouble breathing at any point. No blue lips. But watching hives spread across your kid in real time is its own kind of alarming, reason or no reason.
We went straight to the ER. It was a Friday. Getting medical help right away is the right call whenever hives show up alongside anything that worries you, and swelling and spreading welts were more than enough for us to not sit and wait it out at home. They gave him antihistamines. Within about an hour, he was playing again like nothing had happened. Kids bounce back fast. It's the parents who stay rattled a while longer.
We got referred to an allergist, and the wait for that appointment was about a month. When we finally got in, the allergist walked us through the standard approach for introducing new foods, and I remember feeling a little sick hearing it, because it was so simple and we hadn't known it. The guidance is to introduce one new food at a time, in a small amount, and watch for a reaction before increasing it or moving on to the next new food, not a whole pouch of three ingredients he'd never had together, on a random weekday, with nothing to compare it to if something went wrong. I wasn't trying to do it wrong. I just didn't know there was a right way to be careful about it.
For what it's worth, since I know this is the part every parent reading this actually wants to know: what happened to him was hives and swelling, not the more severe signs. Anaphylaxis is the one that's a true emergency, trouble breathing, swelling of the lips or tongue, a tight throat, a weak pulse, or skin turning pale or bluish, and the AAP's guidance is epinephrine first, then a call to 911, if you ever see any of that. He never had any of it. But your child's own doctor is the one who can tell you where your situation falls on that spectrum, not me.
He was prescribed an epinephrine auto-injector ahead of starting daycare, just in case, which is its own strange milestone, a diaper bag with one in it now.
I built Hey Susan for a lot of reasons, and this is one of the honest ones. After that day, we started building a way to actually do the gradual introduction properly, one new food at a time, a small amount, a wait, before moving on, instead of relying on me to remember a protocol I didn't know existed until an allergist told me a month too late. We're still building it. But it exists because of that Friday.
If you're starting solids and haven't been given a heads-up on this either, ask your pediatrician about how they'd want you to introduce new foods, before you're the one standing in an ER on a Friday afternoon wishing someone had told you sooner.
Get the Hey Susan app
Hey Susan runs in our iOS and Android app. Download it to your phone to chat with Susan and track your little one.
Free to download on iPhone & Android.
