A warning has been issued after nursery staff saved a one-year-old boy who had a serious allergic reaction.
Mum Kerri-Louise Whitham was terrified her young boy would have gone into a full anaphylactic shock.
Baby Dominic who is nicknamed Doodles, has 15 known allergens arising from a range of foods and materials such as latex, avocado, milk and beef.
He also has breathing problems and neonatal absence syndrome following a morphine addiction because of hi mum's disability
Staff at Astbury Lane Nursery in Congleton are aware of his health problems and work with his mum to keep him safe. So when a staff member saw a red blotch on his face, they leaped into action.
On Wednesday, Dominic started a new oral medication for an allergy-related skin condition. Just hours after his first dose, he began showing the first signs of a serious allergic reaction.
Staff at Astbury Lane Nursery reacted quickly and contacted mum Kerri-Louise, who instructed them to give him allergy medication. They administered the treatment within minutes of the blotch being spotted.
Kerri-Louise was called to the nursery after he developed an allergy and could see it was spreading.
She told CheshireLive : “I could see straight away that his lips had started swelling, his eyes were puffy, lips were a deep red. I am relaying this back to the GP, I said, ‘He’s had his allergy medication but the symptoms do seem to have spread in the 10/15 minutes it has taken me to get there.’
“He wasn’t at all fighting for his breath, he just had lots of shallow, quick breathing. The nursery staff, Gemma, had put his hand on his chest, and that is when I noticed his breathing.”
The GP told Kerri-Louise she needed to take baby Dominic to the hospital.
Staff remained calm and helped Dominic into his mum’s car, who was planning on driving him to Macclesfield Hospital.
“Dominic was kind of smiling but quiet. He wasn’t panicked in any way,” Kerri-Louise said.
“Neither were the staff. Because I was on my own, the staff carried him to the car for me and strapped him into the car seat.
After getting advice from husband Carl, she decided to call an ambulance to meet them at the house as fear increased of Dominic’s symptoms getting worse.
He was starting to look more unwell and was becoming lethargic, and more red blotches and patches of eczema were appearing around his face.
When an ambulance arrived, they checked him over and decided to take him to hospital to keep an eye on him as his allergy medication wears off.
At just one year old, Dominic knows sign language. He has learned over 80 different signs since he was just two months old.
Kerri-Louise explained that she was in a car accident at 16 which left her left leg paralysed and also resulted in spinal damage.
She said: “He was born with a morphine addiction because of my disability.
"It’s neonatal abstinence syndrome, and when you go into withdrawal, your body shakes and you get angry because you need something that you can’t have.
“My older son (Matt, aged eight) has the same thing. So we did sign language with the both of them because although they can’t speak, they can sign from six or seven months old.
“Very handy ones have been ‘hurt’, ‘doctor’ and ‘medicine’. He can do animals and really fun ones as well like ‘monkey’ or ‘dog. But the main things we needed him to know were things like ‘medicine’, that would really help us.”
While waiting for treatment, Dominic was signing that his head hurt, signalling to his parents that he possibly had a headache due to the reaction.
Sign language is an important part of managing Dominic’s health, and the nursery have not shied away from embracing this. They have learned to understand some of the signs to help accommodate Dominic’s needs.
Kerri-Louise said: “The nursery have learned sign language to be able to communicate with him as well. He’s probably been there about six months. He started in their baby room, and the baby staff learned sign language because he had been signing since he was about two months old.”
Now Dominic has moved to the baby-toddler room with new staff who have embraced the language.
His mum continued: “Within that room, he can actually sign a sentence, he can do two or three signs now.
"So unfortunately, they (the staff) have got the harder job and they have to learn more signs to keep up with him.”
Fortunately, due to the medication being administered so early on in the reaction, Dominic’s symptoms did not progress much further.
He was discharged from hospital relatively quickly, and the doctor said that they were ‘lucky’ that the reaction had not been worse.
Kerri-Louise said: “She was surprised that his throat didn’t close up on him, it could have been a full anaphylactic shock. But it wasn’t, the reaction paused at face swelling.”
She is grateful that the staff were so quick in their reaction, especially nursery worker Olivia.
The mum added: “She wasn’t tied with Dominic in any way. He wasn’t her responsibility. She’s gone out of her way to know… all his medication, all his health history.
She got to know him that well that she could spot something so quickly and know it was serious. That just says everything about that nursery, they are a million miles ahead. They just treat them like family.”
The reaction had the potential to be deadly, as it was completely out-of-the-blue and the symptoms were the “most serious”.
But the staff at Astbury Lane Nursery's actions saved baby ‘Doodles’’ life.
Kerri-Louise explained that the nursery has been incredible with his allergies, and this incident is just a testament to their care and quality.
She said: “When I mentioned his health problems, it was never a problem.
"Nothing is too much for this nursery, they have made something that was so so difficult at home, such a worry, they made it easy.
“When he goes to nursery, I don’t worry, because I know for a fact that they will look after him.”
It took a week for Dominic’s symptoms to subside, but the situation could have been a lot worse had the nursery not reacted so fast. Nursery Manager, Kate Smithers, said she is ‘proud’ of the team.
She said: “After the girls noticed the mark on Dominic’s face, they instantly reacted by giving him the care and treatment needed.
"The team are incredible and the way they took control of the situation and knew that something wasn’t right, is a detriment to how seriously they take their role.
“From the moment they noticed the mark, to the emergency medication being administered was literally a few minutes.
"Throughout, they remained calm, focused and worked together as a team to support one another, Dominic and also his mother, Kerri.
