NestPod: Your Baby First Aid & Allergy Podcast
Sep 10, 2026 · 10 min · 6 segments
In this video: the moment I learned "you know your child best" isn't always true in anaphylaxis, why severe allergic reactions almost never look like they do in the movies, the strong new evidence on…
Heidi YoungHost
And the one time I feel like I saw this in action is because, so a child, especially a small child, doesn't always present with anaphylaxis like you think they will.
So there's been so many times when a child has been, we've been given food in the allergy clinic and obviously we're always watching, waiting for anaphylaxis.
And sometimes we'll say to the parent, you know, is everything okay? You know, it's, you know, let's have a look at the little one.
You know, their nap isn't usually until about 11 o'clock and, you know, maybe they're sleeping a little bit earlier than they should.
and then I think this is the situation where sometimes we used to see things before the parents did and as a parent myself I never thought that that would be the case but it's definitely I've seen it over and over again in my job so what we would see is that a child maybe was just slightly paler than normal or the sleepiness just looked not quite just sleepiness maybe that they were actually having a blood pressure drop or there just wasn't there was something not quite right but the thing is that does in the movies and we'll talk about that again in a minute so day to day in the allergy clinic i would be doing skin prick testing um educating parents with adrenaline devices and so skin free testing would be like the little pricks on the skin to let the little bit of allergen in and see how they react and then they would see the doctor with the results and we would give them education of whether what they needed to do next whether they need to avoid or whether they need to do food challenges um and obviously food challenges was another part of the job where we would actually feed that food to the child and see if there was any reactions um quite often there were reactions um Often they weren't.
And then, you know, it wasn't rare for children to have anaphylaxis, obviously, in that environment where we're kind of inducing it anyway.
With other illnesses, I feel like the parents could always read their children like a book and really just see when something wasn't right.
Or they would be able to like, you know, maybe they'd had a bit more experience in that area, like knowing when their child was in pain or something like that.
but with anaphylaxis it's not usually it's not always about the child being in pain which is you know often the common indicator of something that's wrong with a child but with anaphylaxis it might be that they're feeling very dizzy or they're just feeling a bit disorientated or just uncomfortable maybe maybe they have got tummy ache but sometimes anaphylaxis comes out of nowhere and it comes very very quickly and also I don't think people are always prepared for how quickly it can happen so the child can actually seem okay and they might seem like they're just a little bit drowsy or they're just dropping off to sleep when actually we need to have them whipped around into a bed and give them an injection in their leg of adrenaline and all before the parent even realises there's much wrong.
But what we've done is we've seen the signs, we've listened to their chest, we've heard a wheeze, or there's been a little persistent cough.
And so often this is why I think that a lot of parents that I've worked with over the years have been quite surprised and a bit taken aback of what's happened.
And then suddenly, like we've given the injection, the adrenaline and they can rectify as quickly as it all started like within a minute or two you can start seeing improvements again which is why we give adrenaline for first-line treatment.
And the one time I feel like I saw this in action is because, so a child, especially a small child, doesn't always present with anaphylaxis like you think they will.
So there's been so many times when a child has been, we've been given food in the allergy clinic and obviously we're always watching, waiting for anaphylaxis.
And sometimes we'll say to the parent, you know, is everything okay? You know, it's, you know, let's have a look at the little one.
You know, their nap isn't usually until about 11 o'clock and, you know, maybe they're sleeping a little bit earlier than they should.
and then I think this is the situation where sometimes we used to see things before the parents did and as a parent myself I never thought that that would be the case but it's definitely I've seen it over and over again in my job so what we would see is that a child maybe was just slightly paler than normal or the sleepiness just looked not quite just sleepiness maybe that they were actually having a blood pressure drop or there just wasn't there was something not quite right but the thing is that does in the movies and we'll talk about that again in a minute so day to day in the allergy clinic i would be doing skin prick testing um educating parents with adrenaline devices and so skin free testing would be like the little pricks on the skin to let the little bit of allergen in and see how they react and then they would see the doctor with the results and we would give them education of whether what they needed to do next whether they need to avoid or whether they need to do food challenges um and obviously food challenges was another part of the job where we would actually feed that food to the child and see if there was any reactions um quite often there were reactions um Often they weren't.
And then, you know, it wasn't rare for children to have anaphylaxis, obviously, in that environment where we're kind of inducing it anyway.
With other illnesses, I feel like the parents could always read their children like a book and really just see when something wasn't right.
Or they would be able to like, you know, maybe they'd had a bit more experience in that area, like knowing when their child was in pain or something like that.
but with anaphylaxis it's not usually it's not always about the child being in pain which is you know often the common indicator of something that's wrong with a child but with anaphylaxis it might be that they're feeling very dizzy or they're just feeling a bit disorientated or just uncomfortable maybe maybe they have got tummy ache but sometimes anaphylaxis comes out of nowhere and it comes very very quickly and also I don't think people are always prepared for how quickly it can happen so the child can actually seem okay and they might seem like they're just a little bit drowsy or they're just dropping off to sleep when actually we need to have them whipped around into a bed and give them an injection in their leg of adrenaline and all before the parent even realises there's much wrong.
But what we've done is we've seen the signs, we've listened to their chest, we've heard a wheeze, or there's been a little persistent cough.
And so often this is why I think that a lot of parents that I've worked with over the years have been quite surprised and a bit taken aback of what's happened.
And then suddenly, like we've given the injection, the adrenaline and they can rectify as quickly as it all started like within a minute or two you can start seeing improvements again which is why we give adrenaline for first-line treatment.
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