Cows Milk Protien Intolerant & weaning ideas, Please!!!

[torgrosset]

Hi my dd has CMPI & I'm weaning her. I've given her the usual baby rice made with her Neocate milk & mixed in a variety of veggie & fruit purees, but I'm bored of that now & I'm sure she is too! I don't really know where to go from here! Does anyone have any good ideas or tips for weaning foods? Any recipes or websies with
ideas would be good too? Or a special milk allegy recipe book etc... All ideas & help gratefully received!!! Thanks...

Mostly i used soya milk in place of cows milk. You can also get milk free spreads and cheese believe it or not.

hi there my ds1 has CMPI and is also sensitive to soya, and ds2 has reflux which is often connected to food sensitivities, so I was extremely careful when weaning him. I posted quite a bit about this under the user name samn around this time last year and probably before that too. I would recommend two books

one by Susannah Olivier called something like 'what to feed your baby', but I can't find it on Amazon at the moment, and one by Lucy Burney , which is my personal favourite anyway.

They both have loads of ideas which don't include cow's milk, as they don't recommend introducing it too early to any baby.

There's also this list of what order to introduce things - just to avoid creating new sensitivities. Although I have to admit I didn't stick to it very rigidly, as one of the first foods I gave ds2 was mango which I then realised came quite late on the list. It doesn't seem to have done him any harm!

Also, I don't think you have to carry on with purees for as long as suggested. Ds2 certainly became very interested in feeding himself very early on, so I was steaming little bits of fruit and veg and letting him hold them himself. (There's certainly some research going on which implies this is a better way to wean children, as they seem less likely to choke when allowed to self feed. Can't provide a link immediately but might be able to check if you're interested.)

So I looked through Jennie Maizel's Finger food for Babies and Toddlers and although it's not aimed at kids with food sensitivities, there are some good ideas and lots can be adapted. When I was feeling keen, I even baked some wheat-free breadsticks (using Dove's Farm Gluten free flour I think) and buckwheat pancakes became a favourite in our house, using rice milk instead of normal milk.

Plus the advantage of babies that self-feed is that you can just cook food for the whole family and they pick the bits they like - that's what ds2 ended up doing. For a while during weaning, the main nutrition comes from whatever milk you're using anyway, so it's just about introducing them to new tastes and textures. So another reason I like the Lucy Burney book is that she has lots of ideas for family meals as opposed to special ones for the babies.

hope that helps a little, i expect others here will be able to give you more ideas

p.s. don't want to start an argument but I'm very wary of soya substitutes because of my experience with ds1, read this thread (which is mainly about soya formula but still applicable) if you're interested

Can you do ricemilk?

for more information about oestrogen effects of soya read this observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly/story/0,9950,1342291,00.html

Soya is also a common allergen - I know personally of one milk allergic baby who had a very nasty reaction to soya. Rice milk, unfortunately, is low in nutritional value so is not a substitute for neocate. Can't add anything else to the good advice from mummypig.

tatt whilst I understand the need to advise the POSSIBLE risks of soy, for some of us that is our only option. I have come away from these threads many times feeling sick and devastated that I could be harming my child because the possible risks of soy are pointed out every time. Then I research the net and put it back into perspective. Yes there are cases where oestogen has affected boys but it is a very small minority. My ds has been on soy for 18 months and has no ill affects as yet. He is allergic to peanuts and has not yet developed an allergy to soy. Sorry for the thread hijack.

Look - she will not be bored okay. Just mix up whatever is in season/cheap/looks nice and she will be fine.

At some point introduce some lamb - it's difficult to be allergic to lamb.

You can make normal rice (I used risotto rice) to make food lumpy when you need that. Lentils are also good and full of protein.

Don't be afraid to mix fruit and veg together - apricot and pumpkin is very nice (the nappies are another story!)

torgrosset- how old is your dd?

When weaning ds, I would say he mainly had fruit & vegetable purees for quite a while. Certainly until about 9 months - he didn't seem to get bored as I used a massive variety of fruit and veg.

The next stage was normal adult meals, pureed. You can make most things without milk - bolognese style mince with rice or potatoes, lamb / chicken / beef casseroles, fish (poached in water) with rice or potatoes, and lots of different veg. I now try to keep certain veg for certain meals so they don't all taste the same.

It all depends on age though I suppose, but it was easier with ds as he wasn't weaned until past 6 months, so we could have given him almost anything.

I continued using the formula milk to mix in with the cereals etc. for a while, then moved on to soya milk in cooking if it was something the whole family were eating.
We use the sunflower based 'Pure' margarine, available in most supermarkets.
Toffuti do a cheddar style cheese slice. Don't buy 'rice slices' as these look OK but have casein in them! Also use Toffuti soft cheese, nice with finger food and breadsticks and stuff. These I get from the health food shop. If you dont mind too much soya, Alpro do nice childrens yoghurts with no bits.

Like everyone else has said - you can do lots of chicken/lentil/fish and veg. without needing to add milk.

I did buy a lactose free cook book, but found the baby and toddler recipe book far more use, and I just substituted soya milk/cheese etc. where I needed to.

Hi. Thanks for all your replies - it's put it a bit more into perspective!!! DD2 is 7 months old next week & she was just over 6 months when I started to wean her. Thanks to Mummypig for such a great amount of advice & tips!!! I actually have the Jennie Maizel's Finger Food book which I used with DD1 but DD2 is nowhere near the finger food stage yet - but she does like putting everything in her mouth - like they all do - LOL. I have read lots about soya & babies etc so not using it until we've seen the dietician (which is in Feb). Don't want to start a debate about it either!!! Also, a bit off topic, DD2 has not had any allergy tests - will this happen in due course? I'm new to this allergy lark & finding it all a bit overwhelming & a tad stressful too. Also, for those who have other LO's, do you cook for the whole family - avoiding dairy/using milk alernatives - or do you cook for the allergic child seperately? All this stuff is buzzing around in my head!!! And that's not all I have to contend with, she has a curved back & plagiocephaly as well but that's a different story!!! Cheers!!!

Just another question!!! At what age did you start to introduce finger foods? Cheers!!!

Just a sidenote, my ds was sensitive to dairy at first (I had to take it completely out of my diet when I was bfing) and we did do soya for a while, but at about 18 months I started gradually introducing cow's milk - mixing it half and half with soya - and now he is fine with it. I know many children have allergies that they don't grow out of but this might be something to discuss with his allergist as he gets older.

HTH

We avoid soya milk and yoghurt style products (mainly because of the diahorrea it induces), but find we're OK with soya flour products (like the Trufree biscuits which are dairy free). You might not need to resort to these though, but my DS is gluten and dairy intolerant.

We also use the sunflower 'pure' margarine (which our Tesco says it's discontinuing - hope that's not nationwide!)

For snacks, we mainly stick to rice cakes. The snack a jack apple danish variety are milk free so far as I can see (not any other flavour that I've seen though). Breakfast cereal is porridge made from a mixture of rice flakes and millet flakes (buy both at health shops and mix). You can make this quite well with rice milk - ds won't tolerate lactose free formula as we started too late.

Allergy tests - just had them, after over a year of campaigning! Yet to see a dietician though. I'm told that the tests are unlikely to be positive for an intolerance though (not sure if your dd has an allergy or intolerance).

My cooking is a mixture - if I can make it for all of us avoiding dairy I do so, if it involves too many alternatives, I tend to cook separately.

Finger foods - before purees! Rice cakes go nice and soggy, so ideal for those first munches!

Have you tried goats milk? DS can't tolerate cows milk, but seems a lot better (although not 100%) with goats milk. This makes cooking a lot easier though, and he seems a lot better with cooked milk than cold fresh milk IYKWIM.

Sorry to hear about the other problems you're having to deal with as well. DS has undescended testes as well, and with me currently pg, it feels like we're constantly at the hospital some months!

mymama my daughter had soya milk as a baby and has nut allergy. Your son had soya milk and has nut allergy. Studies have linked the two. Now I don't beat myself up over it because I didn't know any better and maybe the link is only because kids with a tendency to allergy get given soya - but neither am I going to let anyone else risk it without warning them off. Your hurt feelings - or my guilt feelings - matter less to me than possibly preventing nut and/or soya allergy in someone else's kid.

torgrosset they don't like to allergy test babies. None of the tests are totally reliable and getting blood from a baby isn't fun. Skin prick tests can be uncomfortable and there is even a small risk of them causing a bad reaction. So they tend only to test later on when hopefully the baby will have outgrown the problem Probiotics may possibly be helpful in encouraging kids to outgrow milk allergy, a bit of evidence to suggest they are but not enough to be sure. Since my daughter has been on probiotics (several years now) the only reaction she has had was when we forgot them. Maybe that's just because we've got better at avoiding allergens - with a potentially anaphylactic reaction I won't risk testing her. We used to get around one cross contamination reaction a year.

tatt - my ds was tested for soya and nut at the same time - he had never had either. I only put him on soya after his tests at 7 months.

torgrosset - you could make your own custards and things with rice or soya milk. I got through by adapting all "normal" recipes to what my ds could or could not have. You might have to try them a couple of times before you get it right.

Hi - thanks for all of the replies again - loads of tips & ideas!!! I think when i'm cooking I'll just exchange cows milk for rice or soya milk & then use pure sunflower spread instead of butter/marg.

We have an appointment to see a dietician in February so I guess we'll see what they have to say too...

anniemac - her symptoms were (from an early age) constant vomiting, either severe diarrhoea (like water) or constipation (very large & hard with blood - it tore her bum - ouch poor little thing), straining to do a poo - even with diarrhoea, eczema, low weight gain (off the bottom of the chart in the red book), severe cramps/colic, reluctant to feed & cradle cap/general dry skin. Our GP put her on Wysoy soya milk to see if the symptoms stopped, which they did almost immediately. The paed has since put her on Neocate long term. She has gained loads of weight, but the eczema has creeped back again.

Thaks once again

Hi anniemac - to be honest I've not done any cooking for the whole family that would be suitable for DD2 yet!!! All I've done up to now is to put veggies aside for her & pureed them with some baby rice & her own Neocate milk. I'm going to wait til I've seen the dietician I think (in Feb). What I'm worried about is when she's a bit older & then I'm cooking for the whole family. I don't want to end up doing a meal for us & a seperate meal for DD2. Also worried about snacks & treats as DD1 isn't allergic/intolerant & it's not fair to give her stuff & not DD2. Hmm... I've got all this to come - maybe I'm looking into it too deeply!

Hi can I join this thread. I've been on the allergy threads about a year ago, but under a different name. Other issues overtook the allergy part of my life so I didn't visit here often!

My DS2 is 20 months and has gastric reflux disease (among other things). His paediatrician thinks he is allergic to dairy and soya, so he has been on a diary, soya and egg free diet all his life so far. I dont think he is actually allergic, I think his problmes are all physical, rather than food induced, but I haven't risked trying any of these foods yet to see. (He has had countless tests etc and they have all been negative. Or 'false negatives' as his consultant refers to them. ie the readings are too far off the scale to show up). So in the meantime we plod along as we are... He is due to go in to hospital for some food experiments in February though, so that may be a turning point).

I just wanted to say though that it is possible to find meals and snacks for these childrn with different food problems. But I wont pretend it isn't a pain, as I'm sure all the other allergy meal preparing parents on here will agree. It does get trickier as they get older trying to find new things for them, and keeping them away from things they shouldn;t have, but you do managed. And, very importantly, some children outgrow these problems, so it may not be forever. I hope this is of some use. Good luck!

Hi again!!! I've just posted a new message (called Is it an allergy? what do you think?) coz I think I'm being paranoid!!! I've been giving Dd2 home made mush but gave her a milk/dairy/lactose free jar the other day (coz I was out of the house) that contained gluten/wheat. I wish I hadn't!!! Although she didn't puke, she ended up covered in a rash (after 2 hours of eating it) & the next morning she had horrible poo covered in thick yellow mucus (sorry to be graphic!). Hmmm... I'm now paranoid she has a gluten/wheat allergy aswell...

Oh torgrosset how worrying. Although it may not be the gluten, it could just be because it was a jar, IYKWIM.

I've got a couple of good allergy type cook books, I'll get them off the shelf and let you have the details.

Hang in there. I'll check out yourt other post.