Apparently pregnant women often develop allergies to things that they never had problems with pre-baby. Things will be fine and then all of a sudden - WHAM! - knocked on your ass by a previously benign allergen. I guess it makes some sort of evolutionary, protect-the-species sense - "shield the fetus from toxins" and whatnot. Except that it isn't how it works at all. Instead of becoming violently allergic to alcohol or people who ask inappropriate questions, your body freaks over random things like pineapple or cheese. Or in my case, Vitamin E oil.
Because I'm a crazy paraben avoiding, vaguely hippie-dippie type (except when it comes to buying sunscreen. I defy you to find sunscreen without parabens!) I avoid most mass-marketed moisturizers. I'd read that Vitamin E oil was great for your skin so I decided to pick up a bottle and give it a go. Lo and behold, it worked great! Sure my face looked like I'd bobbed for apples in an oil slick but who cared? My skin lurved it. For months, me and Vitamin E were like that. Tight.
Then I got knocked up. Which is when the itching started. And the redness. And the hives.
At first the reaction was mild - a little pinkness, nothing major. I stopped using it for a few days, figuring I just needed to give my skin a rest. Than I tried it again. And woke up the next day looking like I'd been attacked by leeches.
It's been three days now and I still have scabs. I've switched to Dove's night cream which seems to have helped but I still can't figure out what happened. Being allergic to Vitamin E is like being allergic to magazines or lamps. It's just not normal.
2 comments:
That sucks. So sorry. Still, I hear the reverse is true, too. You can be allergic to something your whole life, get pregnant, and then be fine with it -- at least while you're preggers. Afterwards, it's back to normal again.
Anyway, sorry about the Vitamin E! I like Dove, though, and not just because their ad campaign rocks.
Or you can not be pregnant, have taken/used a particular thing your whole life, and suddenly be allergic once you are say 35 for lack of a better example. Even if you successfully completed a round of said item not two months before you had to take it again and THEN had an allergic reaction. Bodies are funky.
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