Dairyfree new person

[HelenandDenver]

I'm not 100% yet! My son is 8 months old and threw up for the first 6 months on breast feeding until he went onto soya. Nobody suggested that I should remove dairy from my diet as apparently I was letting him have too much and he had reflux! Then he went onto soya and the sickness stopped and the diarrhoea started. So he went onto Nutramigen and so the diarrhoea persists...am at my wits end with it as what the hell can he eat? Is he allergic? Intolerant and to what? What is the conclusion?

[Copper]

Welcome to the site.

It sounds like you and baby have had a tough time. He could be intolerant to both lactose and or dairy protein. He also appears to be intolerant to soya.

Nutramigen is prescribed for babies who are intolerant to both soya and dairy proteins (according to a website).

Have you been referred to a specialist in a hospital? If not I think you need to ask your GP to do so as a matter of urgency. Hopefully a specialist will be able to find out what he is intolerant to and find a prescription milk which will not make him ill. There are other prescription milks available

Please come back and tell us how you are getting on.

[izzy]

hello, you could try asking for Neocate. My daughter (19 months) was prescribed it after being sick on Soya and having awful pain and runny poo on milk. I think lots of people feel as if they are looked at as fussy parents, but don't let that stop you. Your baby is ill, and your instincts should be listened to. Good luck!

[daddys fault]

my daughter has nutramogen and her poo is very loose and smelly but she is not in pain now so i have stuck to it. it does say on the tin that it will cause strange poo. if it is still a problem i believe there is something with even less 'stuff' in it than nutrmogen. goodness knows what though !?!?!?

[HelenandDenver]

Been to the Doctor again today, as although the milk tin does specify "loose stools" this was the problem he was having on soya and before soya it was permanent sickness which could be anything up to 30 times a day.
Doctor today says that he feels that other doctors have jumped to conclusions and that keep changing his milk has made the problem worse.
So we are no closer to knowing if or what he is actually intolerant to.
Got to carry on with the nutrimigen milk for few more weeks and then reintroduce milk products but I am sure it's not going to work and not because I am being negative.
I have tried cow and gate and aptamil and breast feeding and sma and soya and nutrimigen and he just never seems comfortable. The excessive diarrhoea has caused severe nappy rash to the point where his skin is weeping.
Oh well hopefully a conclusion soon

[HelenandDenver]

Hiya thanks everyone for your help, apparently they are not prepared to change his milk again. The next step is reintroducing milk products or cooked milk and then I don't know what happens after that. Don't worry though, I am as pushy as they come when it's for my family. I will update you as and when. Doctor said today he thinks it has been over exaggerated and is probably nothing but funny thing is he suffered so bad with sickness and colic which disappeared when he went on soys but unfortunately was replaced with diarrhoea so obviously something is wrong

[Copper]

Hmm I agree with you that introducing dairy is probably not going to work. If the GP is talking about cooked milk I can see what he is thinking. He thinks that your son has an intolerance to the milk proteins. If you heat a protein up this changes the structure of the protein. I don't know how hot milk has to be before the protein structure is changed. The GP then thinks that your son will be ok with the altered protein. BUT if you son has meanwhile developed an intolerance to the proteins in soya he might well be ok for a while with the altered proteins and then develop an intolerance to the altered dairy protein.

This is the problem with intolerances, we are all different and react in different ways.

If your son also has lactose intolerance this will not change when you boil milk.

GPs are not experts in this field. Have you been referred to a specialist?

[HelenandDenver]

Hi thank you for your reply - yes I did look into the proteins theory myself so you are making far more sense than the Doctors and Health visitors I previously saw. I refuse to see the Health Visitor who accused me of not feeding my son enough to make him sleep through the night and too much which was making him sick and put on too much weight - it doesn't even make sense. So now I don't get him weighed, didn't know I was so stubborn.
I was told yesterday if he doesn't have blood in his stool then there is nothing to worry about and probably not an allergy or an intolerance and that health professionals have over reacted! Sorry I disagree!
I saw a paediatric doctor who said give nutrimigen and then a doctor from neonatal ward/paediactrics yesterday.
It's a mess but after the 6 weeks of cutting the milk I will be putting on more pressure to get this sorted and diagnosed properly.

[daddys fault]

my 2 children have never had blood in stools but both have dairy allergy no question. took ages for gp to accept it with me continually badgering him. crying was apparently just colic and would pass, green poos completely normal, all babies vomit, fussy eaters are fine and can happily live on crisps. what a load of rubbish. i am usually quite shy but kept nagging him and i think he just got sick of me in the end finally seeing allergy specialist next month. he referred me to dietician a long time ago because i told him they were not having dairy in their diet and i wasn't about to start giving it to them.

my point is stick to your instincts and keep pestering them, we know more about it than most gps.

also have found that heat treated formula works for my eldest (aptimal) so there is something in that theory, not for my youngest though. tried eldest on soya for a while and she developed symptoms for that too. all you are saying sounds familiar so believe me you are not going mad, as thought i was too. i stumbled upon a good health visitor who had dairy problems with her own children and she told me it is very common to have problems with dairy and soya.

[HelenandDenver]

Thanks everyone for all your help and support no update as yet

[Copper]

I agree with everything that daddys fault has said.

I think that the number of people having problems with soya is going up. I believe that soya is used far too much. I have always been lactose intolerant on and off from birth, now totally intolerant. Over the years I have developed other food intolerances which includes soya. Even eating food which contains just soya lecithin has to be rationed. So that is 2 squares of dairy free chocolate a day for me :(

A few years ago I developed an intolerance to coconut. I spent about 6 hours on the toilet and did not pass any blood, so who ever told you that is an idiot. Coconut is the food I am most intolerant to in terms of hours spent on a toilet. I feel sorry for all those out there with nappy rash due to these problems as I know how bad it feels.

[daddys fault]

i have been thinking about your problem and wondering what else it could be. think about everything he puts inside him as i have been caught out by the littlest things. teething gel caused a major problem and took me a while to work out. it contains a very high amount of sorbitol which is hard to digest. also toothpaste can be a problem. have you been giving him any food if so what and is ther anything that could be causing problems? some fruits have led to problems with my 2.

hope it helps

[HelenandDenver]

Hi again
Thanks everyone - strangely enough - after being told he wasn't allowed to change milk, I asked for additional supplies due to the weather here and the fact he wants little else to eat except picky/snacky/feed himself stuff. I don't want my son to become a vegetarian like me, nor do I want him knawing on a steak all day either!
However, the diarrhoea does seem to have ground to a halt which suggests to me there is a dairy/soya/lactose intolerance.
But which? Or all? And how will they determine from here ???

[HelenandDenver]

Sorry forgot to say, when his nappy rash got bad I had been giving him satsumas! Sorry for being ignorant but I have had no guidance or experience in this type of thing before so did not realise that orange was a trigger and apparently tomatoes? I appreciate that they are acidic but I was feeling as though every food group had been taken away from him, he did not seem to like pasta or beans so I was left with rice, meat and fruit and veg - but how boring is that?!

[Copper]

Ok this is what you need to do. Keep a food diary. This means that you write down everything he drinks and eats every day. You also need to write down any problems eg bad nappies, vomiting, rashes etc.

As daddysfault has already mentioned make a note of teething gels and anything else you use such as Calpol or what ever the in thing is for pain relief/high temperature.

Hopefully a pattern will emerge. In any case it is something that you can show to a doctor in the hope that they can find out what he has a problem with.

[daddys fault]

i'll list all the things that set my 2 off. it probably wont help you as they are all different but it might give you an idea of the range of things.

oranges satsumas etc, strawberries, fruit juice, fruit squash, sweets and lollies with fruit juice in, biscuits sweetened with juice, anything with a trace of dairy, soya.

doing food diary for both at the moment and it is helpful

[Copper]

Once I realised that I had a problem with coconut I came to the conclusion that you can have an intolerance to almost anything. This makes diagnosis tricky when you have multiple intolerances.