5yo boy - trying dairy free. Soya??

[lucylookout]

Ds2 is CMPI, I'm bf and so eat no dairy and ds2 seems healthy with beautifully clear skin. I'm wondering whether ds1 was CMPI too as he was quota a cranky baby with lots of eczema. He's no a very cheerful 5 year old but his skin is still quite bad. He has eczema but just has so many itchy patches over his body that looking at him naked makes be feel itchy, the poor thing. I wanted to go dairy free with him for 2 weeks as a trial to see if his skin improves and was wondering if soya is safe to give to him.
Btw he doesn't actually like dairy much (no milk, cheese, butter, cream) only eats yoghurt and ice cream.
Thanks!

[freefrommum]

Given his age, soya milk should be fine. It's not recommended for babies under 6mths and we chose not to introduce it until DS reached 5 just to be sure (due to phyto-oestrogens). If you're still worried, you could try oat milk or Kara coconut milk (think it's recently changed name to Koko?) instead. We tried oat milk but DS hated it and refused to drink it unfortunately. Alpro soya yogurts are good too plus there's Swedish glace dairy free ice cream. If you're going to do a trial, I would suggest 4-6 weeks and keep a detailed food diary, not just of what he's eating but also the condition of his skin and any other symptoms (including mood). A word of warning though, eczema is quite often 'just one of those things' that doesn't necessarily improve as a result of a change of diet. My DS's eczema did improve a bit once we eliminated the foods he's allergic to but it's still pretty bad and never fully goes away despite years of me trying to find a 'cause'. I really hope it helps your DS, just didn't want you to get your hopes up too much. Good luck!

[lucylookout]

Thanks for the tips freefrom. Because he doesn't like cows milk as a drink or even in cooking , milk won't be much of an issue, but it's good to have some yoghurt and ice cream alternatives (where do you buy the coconut milk though, that sounds quite yummy for me). And yes, I realise it might not make any difference at all, and I'm making a bit of an assumption based on ds2's cmpi, dairy free diet and perfect skin, but fingers crossed it improves a little (and if the dairy free doesn't, then hopefully when we eventually get some warm spring weather, that'll do the trick too!)
And off topic a bit, but how did you get your son's other allergies diagnosed? DS2's sleep is a nightmare and I really feel it's often down to intense discomfort at night, but feel a bit fobbed off by drs (they put it down to an immature digestive system). I'm considering pushing to get him tested for more.

[incywincyspideragain]

We have 3 boys dairy free n chosen to be soya free because of the phyto oestrogen, decided that if ds's can't have things like yoghurt n ice cream we'd not have it in their diet rather than substitute it with more processed foods with lots of sugars in, they r also very expensive. We've just worked out how to make banana ice ourselves (4 bananas blended with 200g golden sugar and some lemon juice, mix with 500ml of chosen milk or cream - we've used both oately and coconut - freeze for hr, then take out and stir, do that every hr or so and it'll be ready after 5 hrs) we use coconut and oat milk but none of the boys have ever really liked drinking milk so those are in stuff for cooking and both easily available at supermarket, they have added calcium too and we've added more green veg x