Will My Baby Outgrow a Food Allergy? What the Guidance Says

Our allergist started by splitting the common food allergies into two groups, and the published guidance does the same. The ASCIA food allergy FAQ says most children allergic to cow's milk, soy, wheat or egg will outgrow their food allergy. For peanuts, tree nuts, sesame seeds and seafood, it says reactions persist in approximately 75% of children affected.

So a baby with egg allergy and a baby with peanut allergy are starting from quite different places. That was the first thing that eased our minds, because egg sat in the more hopeful group. It also helped us understand why friends with a peanut-allergic child talked about it as a long-term plan, while ours was framed as something to recheck. Neither group is a promise for any one child. Some peanut allergies go away, and some egg allergies hang on well past the usual age.

The American Academy of Pediatrics gives a little more detail on its parent site. The AAP's page on food allergies in children says the majority of egg, milk, wheat and soy allergies go away by age 5. It says only 20% to 25% of children with peanut allergy, and about 10% of children with tree nut allergy, outgrow them.

We found it useful to hold both sources side by side. They agree on the shape of it, even though one gives an age and the other a percentage. Age 5 also gave us a rough horizon to plan around. It didn't mean we would wait idly until then. It meant the allergist would keep checking along the way, and that a no at one appointment was not a no for good.

Nobody told us to try the food again at home and see what happened, and the guidance is clear that this is not how it works. The AAP says an allergist can perform tests to track a child's food allergies and watch to see whether they are going away. ASCIA notes that when a test result is positive but its meaning is uncertain, a supervised food challenge is often done around school age, under medical supervision.

For us that meant follow-up appointments, a repeat test, and eventually a conversation about a challenge in the clinic. Our post on what an oral food challenge involves describes that day. A test result on its own did not settle it either way. The allergist weighed it against what had actually happened when our baby ate the food, which is where our notes came in.

Our allergist also explained that tolerance often shows up first for well-cooked forms. Cooking egg or milk thoroughly in baked goods changes some of the proteins, and many children who react to scrambled egg or a glass of milk can eat them baked into a muffin. That is the idea behind the egg ladder and the milk ladder.

ASCIA says that introducing cooked or baked cow's milk or egg should be discussed with your clinical immunology or allergy specialist before you start. We did not try it on our own. Our allergist chose the starting step, the amount and the timing, and we followed that plan exactly. Our posts on the egg ladder and the milk ladder cover what that looked like, but your allergist decides whether a ladder suits your child at all.

Waiting to find out whether an allergy will pass is mostly ordinary life. We kept the diagnosed food out of the diet as the allergist advised, read labels, and briefed grandparents and daycare. At the same time we kept going with every other food, including the other common allergens our baby already tolerated, because the allergist wanted those to stay in the diet regularly.

The other thing we did was write things down. Every accidental exposure, every mild reaction, and every food that went fine got a date and an amount. When the follow-up appointments came around, the allergist asked what had happened since the last visit, and we could answer from a record instead of memory. That history is part of how the allergist judges whether an allergy is fading, so we treated it as our share of the work.