Lactose or CMP intolerence and sleep-help!

[natters86]

Hi there,

I don't really know where to begin but since my DS reached 4months old, now 6.5mo its been really hard work. It all started with his sleep getting progressively worse, it got to the point that he was waking and screaming every 20-40mins. Other issues, i.e. pulling knees up, passing wind lots, bad eczema made me think allergy, in my wait to see GP i changed his milk from Aptimil1 to Aptimil comfort which had and immediate effect.

Unfortunately this was short lived and we started the steady decline back down to where we were before but this time DS was bringing back all the milk that we gave him, with whatever we had used to get it into him, i.e. weetbix, mix veg etc... He also caught scarlett fever, conjuctivitus and a cold, all of this cleared up pretty quickly with anti-biotics but the cough hasn't gone at all and he is coughing all the time bringing up mucus.

GP wasn't any help, said he was happy that he didn't have a chest infection and i had told him that the cold had gone so it wasn't runny nose making him cough. said he knew nothing about allergies and that we needed a referral to hospital. This we now have for a month's time.

I asked that in the meantime could we try a lactose free formula - again he had no idea what i was talking about - pharmicist at surgery said she would get it in for us and get script but we had to pluck a name out of thin air. DH went for Aptimil Pepti as at the time it was one of the only specialist formulas we knew about.

Again, this worked for a short period, he was sleeping again all evening and less irritable but we seem to be on the slippery slope back down again, last night he was up every hour needing to be resettled, crying at me :(.

I really don't know how much more i can take, i'm back at work and exhausted and would love to hear from anyone who has had similar problems or with any suggestions, i'm sure allergy person will help but its weeks away :(

apologies for long post! and thanks in advance!

I feel for you as had something similar with my own DD, & again not much help from our GP

with DD it turned out to be mostly food additive related, fake sugars, colours & preservatives, lots of these can effect skin & stomach - DD had a mostly natural home cooked diet so thankfully it was pretty easy to spot her triggers, most at parties, nursery etc, but sometimes her nursery insisted she had not been given anything to worry about - only to find out that she HAD, just the Nursery staff hadn't realised bagels & salad cream being the culprit on a couple of occasions - is that maybe another possibility for your DS?

we did also find everything got worse every time after anti Bs so that might be worth you looking at?? - we gave DD Viridian children's flora powders to help her stomach settle from the antiBs, you can hide these easily in smoothy etc

we've also found that DDs gained sensitivity to other foods due to needing antibiotics too - she's now also sensitive to wheat & dairy & her diet needs to be free of these for a while until it all settles down again, & then she can eat these in moderation, though she cannot have lactose at all - so drinks the lactolite milk & mature cheeses etc

if you are worried about him not digesting his food & getting proper nutrition from it, you might want to look into giving him a bit of spirulina as a food supplement - I found this stuff worded wonders with my then pale, thin & constantly exhausted DD & is safe for kids as not a herb,

& if its any consolation - it has taken nearly 8 yrs for our GP to finally listen - the hospital specialist will most likely be better & should hopefully put your GP straight on a few things, ours certainly did :)

Just wondering what foods you are weaning DS on and if there could be anything in there that could be upsetting him?
As Rockhippy said, the antibiotics could have caused the stomach to be sensitive to more than just lactose or dairy.

Thanks rockinhippy, we'll have to give those a try! As you said I hope the specialist will shed some light :)

Auntevil, he's only really having mixed veg, he's had pasta once, and rice once and I didn't really notice anything out of the ordinary. The only other thing I can think of is fruit pots he has at nursery?

Some fruit pots have added dairy. My eldest DS is intolerant to fructose and sucrose - he has no fruit at all - dried, tinned, fresh etc. He also can't have honey. There are also some veg that are known to be irritants. With IBS for example, there are veg such as broccoli that can give cramps. There are also those on here that are intolerant to citric acid and a friend whose daughter can only have fruit and veg that has not been near chemicals (such as 'washed' lettuce etc) as her face goes scarlet. It's sad but true that we acknowledge what food is considered healthy for our DCs to eat, but they can also be the same ones that cause the problems. Do not rule them out.