Whilst the battle continued (and continues to this day) with the ever more resilient eczema, an increasingly frustrating battle was also raging on. From the first time Callum was admitted to A&E and saw the consultant dermatologist, and at every weekly clinic appointment and all the GP appointments in between, I made increasingly louder noises about allergy testing. It fell on totally deaf ears!

'Callum is far too young to be testing, we don't do that before age 5', or 'but you're breastfeeding so it will provide a false positive during the testing process', or the best one 'we just don't do it, not yet, we'll try other avenues first'.

The anger and frustration was beyond explanation. Here I was, every single flipping week, traipsing a 4 year old, a young sick baby, and a tired and stressed out mummy half way across a county, to do battle with traffic, try to find a parking space (always impossible), deal with the then inevitable exploding poo, resulting in a full outfit change, and then a feed to pacify, and only just making it to each appointment by the skin of our teeth. I would then have to go through the food diary (either what I had eaten, whilst breastfeeding, or what Callum had eaten, once weaning) and then trial some new wonder drug or combination that would 'cure/ heal/ fix', never delivering what was promised.

Allergy testing, in my opinion, would provide an answer to the majority of our ever increasing list of questions about what Callum could possibly be reacting to! How bad the reaction was? Why so bad? It would give us a chance to eliminate anything that could possibly be hindering his chances of recovery.

Let battle commence!!