DS (now 14 months) has a whole bunch of food allergies, dairy,
peanuts, egg, wheat and soy. He had horrible eczema from birth, lots
of gas and BMs, and lots of weird rashes. I exclusively BF til about
5-6 months when we let him start solids. He was very into solids, and
we introduced stuff pretty fast. We finally figured it out after he
had hives to yogurt and hives to mac and cheese. It wasn't
consistent, after the first reaction to peach yogurt, I though it had
to be the annato, since he'd had plain yogurt a few times before and
after with no problem, and had had cheese without problems a few
times.

He hated it when I offered him egg, hated soy, and never really had
wheat or nuts. As a rule he loves food, so if he dislikes something,
it is a clue for me that there may be a problem.

At one point before I cut out his allergens, he had a rash I thought
was roseola without a fever. A good friend of mine is a dermatologist
and she said that you pretty much never have roseola without a fever,
and it's tough to miss the fever since it lasts a day or so and is
quite high.

We got him tested and it was high level positive. At the advice of the
allergist I cut all his allergens out of my diet and his, and his
eczema *disappeared* within a week.

Since then we had an accidental milk exposure and the reaction was
quite severe, requiring an epi pen, ER visit, etc...

So I wouldn't rule out food allergy, and it's probably wise to avoid
the suspect food for a while. Your pediatrician can do blood testing
(RAST) that measure the blood level of IgE to a variety of allergens.
Problem is, it's not always that accurate. A very high level might
indicate an increased risk of anaphylaxis, particularly if there are
other risk factors (asthma, eczema, family history) Skin testing is
even less accurate at this age. Also, if you are BFing, he could
have an allergic reaction the first time you feed him the solid.
Apparently, the amount of allergen that passes into the milk can vary
highly between women. DS was so sensitive to dairy in the end that if
I goofed, and ate a bite of something with butter in a restaurant,
he'd break out later.

Good luck. Talk to your pediatrician about testing. I demanded a
prescription for a pediatric epi-pen from our ped even before we
decided to go ahead with testing. It can't hurt to have one on
hand.

JJ