Weaning baby with cows milk intolerance

[kiwiquest]

Anyone done this?? What did you use for dairy substitutes?? When did you try and wean back onto dairy and how? What did you give instead of cows milk to drink when they got to that stage? DD is cows milk intolerant, don't know if this means she's soy intolerant too so not sure if straight substition for soy yogurt is good idea and I'm not sure if the fat\calcium content in soy products is enough for babies??.

[dairyfreequeen]

im in the process of doing this just now, although Ive been following his restricted diet while breastfeeding which makes this stage somewhat more straightforward! if youve had a diagnosis you should be under a paed and dietitian? The advice i was given was to wean 'as normal' and use nutramigen in place of normal milk. However!! As soon as we started weaning ds got all sorts of tummy upsets and reactions and i had no idea what was causing it, so then i cut down to a few foods i knew he was ok with, and introduce a new one every 5-ish days. Which incidentally was what my cousin was recommended to do with her cmpa baby by docs at the same hospital!! We're doing blw and he loves his food, but it is a bit stressful with allergy babies to be honest. I already knew he couldnt tolerate soya through my milk but i think in general its not recommended as a substitute for babies because of the hormones (read that somewhere on an nhs site but im not sure where). I was told as long as theyre getting breastmilk or formula not to worry about calcium until theyre 1, but its in lots of plant sources which i try to get into ds. The nutramigen took ages to come so i havent been brave enough to see if ds can tolerate it, but for cooking koko, oatly, almond milk etc are all fortified with calcium. We are to go back to the dietitian when ds is one to discuss trying the milk ladder which i think is fairly standard. Id recommend the cows milk protein allergy support group on fb, lots of recipes and dairy free finds! Good luck

[kiwiquest]

Thanks dairyfreequeen that's really helpful. I've been trying to get a pediatric dietician appointment for two months....I have a general appointment in July where I fully expect them to say 'oh you really need a dietician, come back in X weeks'.......
Really interesting that you had to introduce new foods so slowly, that's probably a wise thing to do. Yes I'd read that too about soya so wasn't sure if it was good idea to give her soya products.
DD is intolerant rather than allergic, most of the time she was her normal chirpy self, but the cowsmilk was irritating her colon until she was pooing blood.
I'll have a look on Facebook too

[eastmidswarwicknightnanny]

I have a 27week ds who is cow's milk intolerance and I have been breast feeding so dairy free and dietician has advised keep him dairy free until a yr old then will do milk ladder. We use breast milk and vitalite where needed, we weaned at 5mths due to silent reflux he has a good varied diet now.

[Ducky23]

Currently weaning my cmpi ds.

Who diagnosed it for you? I had to see his consultant just before 6 months and was referred to a dietitian who we saw recently.
She advised to wean as normal but just use their milk instead of cows milk and if using any butter/cheese it should be dairy free.
As pp mentioned, we will be starting the milk ladder at 1

[ZarinaCG]

My baby was cows milk intolerant but grew out of it at around 8 months old. Until then I tried to increase her calcium intake by giving her a daily reduced-sugar rusk which contains a good percentage of calcium (17% I think). I tried her on a small amount of soy yoghurt one day and increased that daily until I realised that she wasn't actually soy intolerant. I would add vitalite to her pureed food to bump up the fat and calorie content and I would regularly offer toast (fortified with calcium) and smothered in vitalite (although she wouldn't touch it until one day she did). I found seeing a consultant regarding my daughter's CMPI utterly pointless as she didn't understand that I couldn't feed my ultra-fussy baby any calcium fortified veg - DD hates broccoli for example. So, baby had a lot of porridge with either Neocate and then Aptimil Pepti 1 (much cheaper and can be bought easily off the net), a rusk a day, plenty of vitalite in her purees, lots of soy yoghurt flavoured with fruit puree. Every week I tried her with a couple of spoons from a munch bunch yoghurt until one day it dawned on me that she had grown out of her intolerance. Oatly milk and cream are great for making desserts!

[Delphine31]

I can't be of much help here as I'm not up-to-date on current thinking about the best alternatives to dairy.

I'm just chiming in to say please be wary of soya and make sure you're fully read up on it if it is a route you might end up going along.

I was brought up on soya until the age of around 8 and I am very suspicious that it had a substantial part to play in me having polycystic ovaries, and possibly was a contributing factor to me developing colitis. Knowing what I know now no child of mine will ever have soya as a dairy substitute.

[ZarinaCG]

I'd agree with Delphine. However, there is no need to go gung-ho with soya replacements. I think that a small pot of soy yoghurt a day or a spalsh of soy cream in food until baby learns to accept textured and lumpier food and will therefore have a wider variety of food to choose from isn't going to do baby any harm (assuming there is no soy intolerance).

One last thing (and this is only from my own experience with my DS and talking to other mums), if your baby is intolerant chances are she will grow out of her intolerance fairly soon. With mine I added a tiny bit of butter to her dinner a couple times a week to test her reaction and occasionally I would offer her jarred food where one of the minor ingrediants was milk. Basically, really, really small amounts. I went down this route as her dietician was unhelpful and even then I had to wait 3 months for her appointment so I felt no choice other than to start testing things out slowly. Thankfully it worked for us so please read up or talk to other mum before you decide how best to tackle your baby's diet. Good luck and don't stress too much.

[RetroHippy]

We're just starting to see this with DS, can I ask what sort of reactions your DCs had? DS is not just reacting to milk, but there seems to be no pattern - he's reacting after eating stuff that he's previously been fine with.

I've only noticed it in the last week, so I'm just starting the process of single foods from scratch again.

[daisydalrymple]

I've found this thread really helpful thanks. DS is 8mo and we're currently both on dairy free for possible cmpi. Retro with DS, he's always struggled with wind but had even more pronounced symptoms since weaning, arching back, struggling to kick wind out, lots of bottom wind (stinky), sometimes green mucousy poo, very unsettled evenings so sleep a nightmare. It's not confirmed if he's cmpi yet, so don't take these symptoms to be typical, but he's definitely reacting to something and has done since tiny, hv just kept dismissing it as colic because he's bf. Once he started weaning and symptoms became more pronounced she started taking me more seriously (especially as I waited to wean till close to 6mo which she felt was too late!) never seen these symptoms with two older dcs so I know something is going on.