What milk to give my DS?

[BubsMaw]

Hi, I'm looking for opinions, and to draw on others experience.

My DS is 8 months old and has cow milk protein allergy. For now he is breastfed, I use a little oat milk or rice milk in his food and he'll drink water from a cup. He is quite up for eating solids as well and his diet is fairly varied, we suspect he also has egg allergy. We have a strong family history on both sides of multiple allergies and all the atopic conditions.

My DD who's 4.5 has multiple allergies, I ended up BFing her for 3.5 yrs!! she became allergic to soya formula within a couple of weeks of starting on it, she couldn't tolerate pepti/nutramigen etc. and wouldn't touch neocate. When she got older she drank rice milk during days, this is still her drink of choice.

I'm due back at work in a couple of months and will be leaving DS for 10hours at a time so he'll need to drink something while I'm away. At this stage with DD we ran int so many difficulties I ended up resigning from the job I had then .

DS is quite a chilled out fella and I think he'll be more up for drinking formula/alternative milks than DD, she used BF as an emotional crutch, and wouldn't eat solids, so I think we should (hopefully!) have an easier time with DS than we had in the past with DD.

So my dilemma is what to give him. Rice milk is no longer recommended for little kids (though DD must have drank hundreds of litres by now ). I don't like oat milk (oatly) much with its strange grey brown sediment plus it's not that nutritous. We could get neocate but I have reservations as its so artificial and highly synthesised. Soya is allergenic and also oestrogenic? History with DD on the pepti and nutramigen wasn't good. Are there any other options?

To further complicate things I'm hoping to night wean DS off the boobs sometime soon.

I'd appreciate (if anyone's still reading!) if you could share your experiences with me. Many thanks.

we use oat milk. i can't see that it's any worse than rice milk nutrition-wise is it?
we use the fortified one which has as much calcium as semi skimmed milk

I think if I were you I would see about neocate though. just because your baby is younger than mine were when they were left and 10 hours is a long time.

My DS had dairy allergy and I weaned him onto soya-based formula rather than actual soya milk. He never showed any signs of allergies with this although I know many are allergic to dairy and soya.

Your DS may be ok too.

There's a specific reason why rice milk stopped being recommended - not just poor nutrition, something that was in it although I can't remember what now.

I was slightly concerned about reports of the high oestrogen content of soya but the nutritionist at our local hospital didn't seem concerned about it. Probably worth seeking professional advice. The key thing they need from milk drinks is calcium, so as long as they are getting enough of that, they are not getting too much bad stuff. I that makes sense?!

Hi thisis.. thanks for your reply. I was leaning towards the neocate option, but have no experience of it.

DS will be 11 months old when I get back to work, DD was 2yo so it's a different situation this time.

Prob worth mentioning I'll be working for 3 days/wk so DS & I will have 4 days together, but the BF supply demand probably won't work to do lots of BF for four days then hardly any for three. If I also do night weaning then there will only be opportunity for 2x BF per day on work days. I don't want to do pumping Bmilk (tried and failed with pumping in the past, plus I feel that handing over BM to the childminder would be a little icky?!, plus at 11 months and growing that it won't be completely necessary).

Sorry that last sentence didn't make sense - just realised late for school run....!

Pepti with vanilla extract in it to cover up the taste?

Hi, and thanks all.

I have some reservations with trying soya formula as DD became sensitised to it and was then allergic to all soya for a couple of years after that (now outgrown). She also reacted to pepti and nutramigen, there was another hydrolised formula we tried with same results. Of course DS may react differently. With DD she was willing to try the soya, but became more and more wary of formulas and bottles as we kept trying alternatives and she kept reacting to them, so that by the time we were on neocate she wouldn't go near it. I wonder if we'd just started with neocate things may have worked out better. This all forms part of my dilemma of what to do with DS. I'd rather use pepti than neocate if he could tolerate it.

Thanks again.

I think you'll have to go Neocate/pepti etc as it'll be a long 10 hour stretch even if he's good with solids.

DS has never had a 'milk' drink, I don't think it's necessary nutritionally. He has oat or rice milk with cereal and I cook with it. Rice milk isn't recommended in huge quantities for young children because of the arsenic content. I wouldn't go for soya formula personally, it can go hand in hand with dairy allergy and we were told it wasn't recommended by our allergy consultant.

I too ended up breastfeeding for a long time with ds, he wouldn't take the hydrolised formulas or bottles at all. I went back to work when he was 6 months 3 days a week but only left him for 7 hours at a time. I did a lot of night feeds though to make up for missing daytime ones and his weight never suffered (my mental state wasn't great after feeding 4 times a night for 2 years though ).

I'd start mixing whichever formula you decide on with breastmilk now and gradually work up to full formula as he gets used to the taste. If he's a good eater he might manage with just one bottle a day and you could carry on breastfeeding as well for a bit to ease the back to work change for him.

Sorry, cross posted with you Bubs. From what you've said I'd go straight to Neocate just in case. At 11 months you won't need to use it for too long if he's a good eater. If you want to stop breastfeeding (and who wouldn't after a 3.5 year stretch!) it might be the easiest way to get to where you need to be.

Hopefully it will avoid the problems you had with your dd and make your return to work a bit more successful than last time. Good luck

Just mulling over all your responses and my options. Thinking I may request some Pepti from GP to try with DS, then if this fails go straight to neocate.

Can anyone advise me of taste and acceptability to babies of the different formulas? I can't remember from when we were doing all this with DD. Does Pepti taste foul? Better or worse than nutramigen, and how do they all compare to neocate? What other hydrolised formulas do you know of (I'm pretty sure we tried another one also with DD, can't remember for sure, and what it may have been called?)

It's very helpful to read your posts!

Cross posted with Bilbomum! Got distracted mid post. Hmmm.... too many choices, and none of them clear winners!

Are you under a hospital consultant for the kids allergies? We have a specialist nurse attached to the unit who's really helpful for stuff like this. Maybe you could make some enquiries and see if your hospital has similar?

From distant memory Pepti is supposed to be the best tasting I think but they all smelt absolutely vile to me. It's why I carried on breastfeeding - I felt guilty expecting ds to drink what I couldn't even bear to smell!

I'm sure someone with more recent experience will be along soon.

Hi Bilbo, DD sees a hosp allergy consultant in London, yearly appts with next appt due in March '11. DS sees a hosp paed locally (we no longer live in London, but within reasonable travelling distance of there). He has been seen only once at 5 m.o. and was given some neocate then. We didn't use it at the time and the tin is now out of date, but a letter was sent to our GP so we could get more if we wanted. DS is next due to see the paed. at 1 yr old, but I want to have got this sorted before then. I will prob make a GP appt to discuss this (will need to anyway in order to get prescription for formula), but I've never found our GP to be much help, I suppose they're generalists by job description!

Should also add, DS's paed is not an allergy specialist, she gave us the neocate because she had a promotional tin to hand, she didn't have much to say about the merits of one type of formula over the others. I doubt we'd be able to get DS referred to DD's consultant (Dr Fox at St. Thomas) because of where we now live, TBH we didn't let on to the hosp that we'd moved house because we wanted DD to continue to be seen there. We just get our mail forwarded so we don't miss any appt info.

I guess this is drip feeding of info, but if I was to put all this up front it would have been the longest OP ever!