Breastfeeding Lactose intolerant /cow's milk protein intolerant bubba???

[luscious Laura]

Hi tracey, I will send you a email with a few links... but in the mean time I thought I'd just do a quick post to try and help and clear things up....

Firstly, lactose intolerance and dairy allgery or a sensitivity to the dairy protein casein are two quite different things....

Lactose is a sugar and is found in the breast milk of ALL mammals.... including humans.... so if it's a lactose problem, it won't matter what you eat, as your body will produce it's own lactose anyway...

From memory, there are 2 types of lactose intollerance. One type is rarer and occurs from birth, the other type is the one you hear more about and I was under the impression that they wouldn't strictly confirm it until the child is about 5 years old as an intollerance is soemthing you achieve over time.

though a lactose intolerance can be caused by an underlying allergy to something like dairy or wheat, A sensitivity or allergy to something will cause an immune response in the body (all sorts of things but most commonly reactions range from hives to anaphylaxis). Basically the body attacks itself in the presence of the allergen.

a lactose intolerance will cause symptoms of pain, discomfort or illness but not an immune response.

So firstly and really importantly, you need to get an allergist or paed to just do a skin ***** test for the basics... dairy, soy and maybe egg.... like Christy said the main allergens are dairy, egg, soy, seafood, strawberry, nuts, citrus and kiwi fruit. THese are the things you need to stay away from.

Until you know what you're dealing with, eliminate all of those from your diet. depending on how things go.... you might want to eliminate wheat until you know for sure it's safe to have it.

Like Someone mentioned that you will need to check the ingredients on EVERYTHING!!!! honestly, they put soy or milk in all sorts of things..... from tuna to orange juice to wine..... it's all got milk or egg or soy in it. So be really vigilant because whilst the body does filter to a degree.... the baby will still get a dose of whatever you eat. About 3 months ago i accidently took one single bite of a sandwich that had cheese in it (it wasn't meant to) and from that one bite, DD got the runs, a really nasty nappy rash and hives!!

As for what you can eat.... rice and meat and veges and fruit (avoid citrus and strawberry and kiwi)...plain but safe for now.

Bread - if you go to bakers delight or brumby's get them to give you their big recipe book and you can check things, otherwise you will need to stay away from the processed breads from the supermarket as pretty much all of them will be no good ( I think helgas is ok.... but check) Turkish bread usually has milk in it ..... SOME brands of crumpets are ok, others are not.... and also, it's really common for a product that is safe one week, might not be the next, so you need to check EVERYTIME!!

Rice milk is available from the supermarket.... we use rice milk as opposed to soy... we use the Pure Harvest brand.... Its organic and australian and has less ingredients than the brands that primarily make soy milk.

at this point, i woudn't worry about your calcium intake... it's really the least of your worries, plus there really isn' that much in dairy.... depsite all the ads and blablabla they'd want you to believe on tv.

Also, the protein in soy isn't the same as the one in dairy. They are similar, but you may find that if he is allergic to dairy, he might be fine with soy.... or it might be that its the soy or maybe a nut allergy that is the underlying issue. you won't know until you do the skin ***** test.


Also, have you noticed that he get hives, or rashes on his face or skin if you kiss him after you've eaten foods with dairy in them?!? that's a good indication of an allergy

DD will get hives is someone kisses or touches her and they have milk on their lips or hands etc...


The up side is that once you eliminate all that stuff from your diet, you should see massive improvements really quickly, like within a few days.


I have a friend that has one son with a dairy and egg allergy and the other with a lactose intolerance.

The one with the dairy allergy, he could breastfeed no worries as long as she didn't eat anything with egg or dairy in it.

Her son with the lactose issues.... well she still has cut out dairy, but she can't exclusively breastfeed as that woul result in too much lactose for him, so he has soy formula and she feeds him 3 feeds a day at most. Until they figured out the lactose problem, he was on meds to treat refulx... now that they've made changes to lessen the amount of lactose he's getting, they are able to cut back the reflux meds and soon he'll be off them completely.

Apparently breastfeeding technique can greatly affect a baby with a lactose problem too... basically you just need to make sure the baby gets the all the hind milk.... but i have a link for you to check out that explains it all much much better than me.


I hope you can get in to see someone to do the allergy tests soon (many will tell you that it's unreliable before 3 months of age.... and it probably is.... but if you just want one or 2 things checked... i still think it's worth checking out and discussing with the allergist or paed.)


big hugs!!

I've also sent you an email

xxx
L