Advice for breastfeeding CMPA

[Chloris33]

My 7mo came out in hives when he ate cheese at 6 months. I've since avoided dairy in his diet & cut dairy from my diet as I'm breastfeeding. He's never had any other symptoms - no tummy upsets. He has had longstanding eczema though, and I wanted to trial going dairy free myself to see if it would help his eczema but after 4 weeks it hasn't. He's tried a wide range of foods now, including eggs, wheat products & other common allergens & doesn't have other allergies so far. I'm wondering if I need to be completely dairy free myself for breastfeeding? Or would just a limited dairy diet be sensible? A month on, just tried him on a malted milk biscuit as step one of the milk ladder & he was fine - no reaction. I find GP & HV are vague on this matter & would appreciate advice from anyone with personal experience. Thanks!

[Verbena37]

So the first time I gave both of mine mature cheddar, they came out in bright red eczema around their cheeks and mouths. Even my eczema gets instantly worse if I touch strong mature cheese.

If the cheese was a stronger type, try your baby on very mild cheese or a mild cheese sauce and see if he comes out in hives again. If he isn't reacting to any other dairy, it seems that it could just be the strength of cheese.

[Verbena37]

BTW, my two are both fine now. They can eat any cheese.

[Acorncat]

I found I had to to cut dairy out completely before I saw a difference, it's hidden in a lot of things so it's quite a pain. Just make sure you eat calcium rich foods or take a supplement. I wasn't sure if it was dairy, but figured I had nothing to lose my cutting it out temporarily. After giving him dairy by accident it took 5 weeks for the eczema to clear up. I've been dairy (and soya and egg) free for 10 months and it's not that bad once you start finding alternatives.

[MarthaMonkeynuts]

If cutting out dairy in your diet didn't make a difference then personally I wouldn't bother.

My ds had cmpa (amongst many other allergies including soya) so i bf him for 3 years but didn't need to cut his allergens out of my diet.

[welovetheolympics]

Agree with last poster, if cutting dairy in your diet hasn't made much difference & he can cope with the milk in a biscuit then I wouldn't go dairy free. My experience (for what it's worth) has been that I did go dairy free for 6 weeks during which time daughter's bad hives cleared up (they lasted 2 weeks after a bottle of formula), but then 'challenging' by going back to milk myself for over a week now, and she hasn't had a reaction. Now waiting for tests to see if she really is allergic so we know for when we start weaning, but it appears that she's not so sensitive to get it from my breast milk. Which is a relief because I found dairy free diet very hard, and wasn't great for my health, but am sure others cope better!